Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum joined Governor Mike Dunleavy and Alaska’s congressional delegation Thursday in Washington to announce several major actions impacting rural Alaska.

Among the updates: the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain is now reopened for oil and gas leasing. Right-of-way permits were also approved for the Ambler Road project, which will connect the Dalton Highway to key mining areas in Northwest Alaska.

"The Ambler Mining District represents some of the richest [mineral] deposits in the entire world, and these have been locked up," explained Burgum.

Additionally, the Secretary signed off on a road connecting King Cove to Cold Bay, a project decades in the making.

"It just seems preposterous to me that somehow it's taken 40 years for us to pu

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