“Deeply frustrated.”

That was how U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat who represents all of Alaska in the U.S. House, described her reaction to the heavy-handed move by the Biden administration to cancel remaining oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic Refuge.

Alaska’s political leaders — as the Associated Press noted in an article in Friday’s edition, Republicans and Democrats alike — see oil and gas development in the region as integral to creating jobs for indigenous communities, which due to their remote location have few other opportunities for job creation.

Beyond needed jobs for the northern reaches of Alaska, the exploration and development of oil and natural gas provides sources of affordable energy for our nation’s businesses and homes.

Producing oil and gas, as we have repeatedly editorialized, does not impede the development of renewable energy. It does not prevent public-sector funding or private-sector innovation from improving the technologies that will make affordable battery capacity to support wind and solar possible in the future. It does not stymie the construction of geothermal plants or hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants.

What it does is meet our nation’s immediate energy needs, afford our consumers a wider array of options and curtail the increases in costs that are hamstringing our economy.

And it does so while creating jobs for communities that historically have been too often marginalized.

We continue to implore this White House to recognize the value of our oil and gas industries, to respect their contributions to an affordable and diverse energy market and to not burden them with resistance and harassment.