Trillions in U.S Oil: Trump Unleashes Next

Oil rigs operating at sunset in a desert landscape.

The most controversial thing Trump may do in his second term is not about tweets or trials, but about unlocking trillions of dollars in oil beneath some of the wildest land left on Earth.

Story Snapshot

Trump’s 2025 Alaska strategy reopens vast Arctic areas to oil and gas, reversing 2024 conservation rules.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain is back on the drilling map with restored leases and new sales.
Indigenous communities, environmental groups, and energy advocates are colliding in a high‑stakes legal and cultural fight.
The outcome will shape U.S. energy security, federal land policy, and climate debates for a generation.

Trump’s New Arctic Play: Rewinding the Clock to Unlock the Ground

Donald Trump’s Alaska agenda in 2025 is simple to describe and hard to overstate: strip away recent restrictions, restore older rules, and let the oil and gas capital flow again across the Arctic frontier. The centerpiece “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” order directs every relevant agency to scrub “punitive restrictions” and “fully avail” federal and state lands for development, from the Western Arctic to the fabled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Department of the Interior translated that directive into a concrete roadmap: more leasing, less red tape, deeper alignment with Alaska’s pro‑development leadership. For conservatives focused on energy dominance, federal overreach, and high prices, the logic is straightforward—why leave enormous American resources idle while adversaries like Russia pump the Arctic with fewer scruples and more ambition? For critics, the same plan looks like a deliberate march backward into a 1970s regulatory world that ignored climate science and Indigenous rights.

Western Arctic: From “Special Areas” to Open Season

The Western Arctic’s National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR‑A) is not some scenic side plot; it is a 23‑million‑acre energy and wildlife juggernaut Congress originally dedicated to national fuel security. In 2024, the prior administration tightened protections for roughly 13 million acres of “Special Areas” around Teshekpuk Lake, Kasegaluk Lagoon, and other ecological hot spots, making new drilling there more difficult. Trump’s Interior team chose those protections as a prime target for rollback in 2025.

The department’s final rule rescinds the 2024 safeguards and snaps back to 1977‑era regulations, greatly expanding where companies can lease and explore across the Western Arctic. Earthjustice calls that move an attempt to “take us back in time” and labels it part of a “reckless fossil fuels agenda” that ignores rapid Arctic warming and subsistence needs for local communities. Supporters counter that Congress never intended NPR‑A to morph into a de facto wilderness park and that responsible development and wildlife protection are not mutually exclusive under existing law.

ANWR Coastal Plain: Sacred Ground or Strategic Reserve?

If NPR‑A is the workhorse, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) coastal plain is the icon. On October 24, 2025, Interior finalized a plan to open its 1.5‑million‑acre coastal strip to drilling, restore leases canceled under Biden, and lay out at least four lease sales over the next decade. This follows a federal judge’s view that Biden lacked authority to rip up leases held by a state corporation, giving new legal ballast to the Trump team’s restoration.

The divide inside Alaska is as stark as the landscape. Gwich’in communities view the coastal plain as sacred—the birthplace of the Porcupine caribou herd that underpins their food security, culture, and spiritual identity—and they treat drilling there as an existential threat. The Iñupiat community of Kaktovik, sitting inside the refuge, largely backs “responsible” development as a lifeline for jobs, infrastructure, and local revenue, arguing that outsiders romanticize the land while they live the economic consequences.

Energy Security, Climate Risk, and Conservative Common Sense

Supporters of the new Arctic push frame it as a textbook case of conservative priorities: strengthen domestic production, reduce dependence on unstable suppliers, and restore state and local influence over how nearby lands are used. Interior’s messaging leans heavily on “energy, local control and land access,” casting Alaska’s leaders—not Washington activists—as the rightful partners in deciding how far drilling should go. American common sense asks why the United States should unilaterally disarm in the Arctic while Russia and others accelerate development.

Opponents argue that true prudence now must factor climate math, not just barrels and jobs. They warn that layering long‑lived oil fields, roads, and pipelines onto fast‑warming tundra could undermine caribou, migratory birds, and polar bear denning habitat while locking in decades of new emissions. Groups like The Wilderness Society accuse the administration of elevating corporate interests above Gwich’in rights and spiritual responsibilities, and they promise to test every step in court.

Legal Showdown and What Comes Next

The next chapter will not unfold in a drilling rig yard; it will open in federal courtrooms. Litigators plan to challenge the NPR‑A rollback as “arbitrary and capricious” under bedrock environmental law, arguing Interior sidelined climate impacts, subsistence rights, and its own statutory duty to give “maximum protection” to Special Areas. ANWR’s new plan faces a parallel gauntlet under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

For readers who care about outcomes more than rhetoric, two questions dominate. First, do the 2025 rules create enough legal and economic certainty to lure serious industry investment back into some of the harshest operating conditions on earth? Second, when courts weigh energy security, statutory text, and environmental risk, will they ratify Trump’s attempt to reset Arctic policy—or impose new judicial guardrails that outlast his administration? The answers will decide whether this drilling surge becomes a brief spasm or a lasting realignment.