Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan wants to know what officials at the Interior Department have been saying to environmental groups, after the agency ceased work on an initiative that could lead to state ownership of land under the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
The Republican sent a letter to Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning on Aug. 13 asking for internal emails, calendars, personal texts and other communications about Public Land Order 5150, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, with nongovernment employees.
Sullivan wants the information because BLM announced earlier this year that it would delay its consideration of lifting the public land order, which reserves about 2 million acres of federal land for the use of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Alaska wants the order extinguished so it can take over the land under the fuel conduit.
Interior also received a petition earlier this year from environmental groups to consider retiring the pipeline, which is key to the state’s Arctic oil industry.
