Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is taking steps to expand oil and gas drilling on federal land in Alaska and transfer land to the state in an effort to advance a liquified natural gas (LNG) pipeline.

On March 20, the Interior Department announced that the agency will reopen 82 percent of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve on in the Alaskan Arctic to oil and gas leasing. The department will also make the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge available for leasing.

The department also announced plans to convey land along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River to the State of Alaska  to “help pave the way forward” for an industrial access road and the Alaska LNG pipeline.

The more than 800-mile-long Alaska LNG pipeline would transport nearly 4 billion cubic feet of gas to per day from production and treatment facilities on Alaska’s North Slope to planned export facilities on the Kenai Peninsula, southwest of Anchorage.