"Senate Energy Committee"

Support for Haaland is widespread in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region, where many prominent female leaders have backed Haaland.

Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo tribal member from New Mexico, would be the first Indigenous cabinet secretary. Alaska Native leaders have mounted a big campaign to confirm her.

The U.S. Senate will hold a hearing today on whether to allow drilling in the refuge as part of the Republican tax plan, and now the environmental argument has shifted.

The U.S. House has passed the Senate’s budget resolution, and with it the seeds of legislation that could open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The resolution itself has no force of law but it tells committees in the House and Senate to draw up a bill that includes tax cuts.

The U.S. Senate voted earlier this evening on a measure that could open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling rigs before the end of the year. It’s far from a done deal. This is just the first stage in a Senate process known as “budget reconciliation.”

The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Wednesday there was no time left to pass an energy bill, according to the publication The Hill.

Time is running out on one of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s top priorities: a far-reaching energy bill. Murkowski had hoped the legislation would serve as her crowning achievement after two years as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee.

In Washington, both sides of any Arctic drilling dispute want to show they have locals on their side.

It’s a coup for Murkowski, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, who says she included the policy priorities of 62 senators, Republican and Democrat.

Shell’s global priorities may have played a role in its decision, too. In April, Shell’s CEO said the company aimed to pare down to three types of businesses, which did not seem to include the Chukchi project.