The Trump administration has started the regulatory steps to hold at least two lease sales in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the next decade, as required by the tax bill Congress approved in December.
The first sale, offering a minimum of 400,000 acres, could happen as early as next year.
A notice that will be published in Friday's Federal Register starts a 60-day comment period on how the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management should prepare an environmental impact statement ahead of the lease sales.
The tax reform bill President Donald Trump signed into law in December included a provision to allow drilling in ANWR, within a coastal plain in northwestern Alaska known as the 1002 Area.
The coastal plain includes about 1.6 million acres within the 19.3 million-acre refuge.
Alaska's delegation in Congress, which has fought for years to open ANWR, applauded the regulatory step."We welcome this scoping announcement and the department's continued work to implement our legislation opening the Coastal Plain to responsible energy development," Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Representative Don Young, all Republicans, said in a statement.
The notice said BLM would hold at least five public meetings in Alaska, in Anchorage, Arctic Village, Fairbanks, Kaktovik and Utqiagvik.
