JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday said no bids were submitted for this week’s oil and gas rental agreement sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a sale the state has challenged as too restrictive and at odds with a 2017 law aimed at opening the refuge’s sweeping coastal schedule to discovery and advancement.
Monday was the deadline for companies to submit bids, the agency said.
Interior Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said the lack of gain by oil companies in pursuing leases in the refuge’s coastal plain “reflects what we and they have known all along – there are some places too special and sacred to put at uncertainty with oil and gas drilling.”
“The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere; we’d recommend that’s a prudent place to commence, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the globe,” she said in a statement.
But this is unlikely to be the last word. The state this week sued the Interior Department and federal officials over the sale, alleging among other things that the terms were too restrictive. The state also is seeking to have the environmental review underpinning the sale thrown out. Litigation around the first rental agreement sale — held in the waning days of the Trump administration in early 2021 — also is still pending.
A 2017 law that President-elect Donald Trump has often highlighted called for offering two rental agreement sales in the refuge’s coastal plain by late 2024. Major oil companies sat out the first sale, which saw a state corporation as the main bidder. One of President Joe Biden’s first acts as president was to order a review of the leasing program, which ultimately led to the cancelation of seven remaining leases. Smaller companies had previously given up two other leases they’d held from that sale.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the Interior Department, has said that it offered for rental agreement as part of the smaller, second sale 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares), the minimum acreage required by the 2017 law. The agency said its proposal avoided significant polar bear denning and caribou calving areas and had the smallest footprint of potential surface disturbance.
Leaders in Gwich’in communities near the refuge consider the coastal plain sacred, citing its importance to a caribou herd they depend upon, and resist drilling there. Leaders of the Iñupiaq throng of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, back drilling and view responsible oil advancement as critical to the economic wellbeing of communities in the region.
Drilling advocates — including state political leaders — are optimistic Trump will pursue drilling in the refuge, seeing a potential to make jobs, generate additional turnover and spur U.S. oil production. But while the Bureau of Land Management has said the coastal plain could contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, there is limited information about the amount and standard of oil there. And environmentalists contend the lack of gain by oil companies so far should talk volumes.
“They seem to comprehend that drilling in this remote landscape is too risky, too complicated and just plain incorrect,” Erik Grafe, an attorney with Earthjustice, said in a statement. “The incoming Trump administration still hasn’t gotten the memo and has vowed to keep trying to sell the refuge for oil. We’ll continue to use the power of the law to defend this cherished place, as we have for decades.”
