The Trump administration has taken another step to “drill, baby, drill” in Alaska, scheduling an oil and gas lease sale in the state’s effectively untouched Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for later this spring.
The sale comes on the heels of the administration’s first auction for oil and gas lease sales in the North Slope borough of Alaska, which drew historic bidding.
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The Bureau of Land Management announced Friday morning that it will hold the auction in Alaska’s Coastal Plain of ANWR on June 5.
The area stretches across 1.56 million acres, and at least 400,000 acres will be made available. It was not immediately clear what the exact number of leases for the June sale will be.
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer, BLM is required to conduct at least four lease sales in the Coastal Plain by 2035.
The June auction will be the first lease sale in ANWR since the final days of the Biden administration, which ultimately drew no bids.
At the time, the Biden administration said the lack of bidding was evidence that there was little to no interest from the oil and gas industry to drill in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, supporting its effort to expand environmental protections in the region.
But Alaskan officials pushed back, claiming restrictions set on the lease sale prevented oil and gas development, making it impossible to pursue new projects on the acres put up for sale.
The Trump administration has since pointed to its March lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, which is also located in the North Slope, as evidence that the industry does want to develop oil and gas resources in the remote regions.
“The record-breaking success of last month’s lease sale in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve sent a clear signal: There is robust and continuing demand for Alaskan energy, underscoring the need for more opportunities like the Coastal Plain sale,” Acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said in a statement. “By expanding these opportunities, we strengthen our national energy security, support high-paying jobs for Alaskans, and help ensure Americans have access to affordable energy.”
Drilling has been authorized by Congress since 2017, though, unlike the NPR-A, there has been little movement since.
During his first administration, President Donald Trump approved nine lease sales in the refuge, but seven of those were suspended by former President Joe Biden. The remaining two were canceled by bidding companies.
The Trump administration moved to walk back protections imposed by Biden that restricted oil and gas development in the wildlife refuge, opening the Coastal Plain’s entire 1.56 million acres to leasing.
The administration’s efforts have also been supported by the Republican-led Congress, which nullified a rule issued by BLM under Biden, which barred oil and gas drilling on roughly 1.2 million acres of the region.
Oil and gas operations in the North Slope have been heavily opposed by environmentalists and climate activists, who say drilling would threaten the surrounding environment and wildlife.
FIRST TRUMP OIL AND GAS LEASE SALE FOR ALASKA’S NORTH SLOPE DRAWS ‘HISTORIC’ BIDDING
But Kaktovik, the sole small Native community in the Coastal Plain, has broadly come out in support of increased drilling activity.
Kaktovik, like other villages and cities in Alaska’s North Slope, relies heavily on tax revenue generated by resource development projects such as oil and gas drilling. More than 95% of the North Slope Borough’s budget comes from this revenue.
