News

The Trump administration finalized plans to open the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to potential oil and gas drilling and is planning an oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has called for nominations for areas to auction in the NPR-A, the first step in the leasing process. The One Big Beautiful Bill, passed this summer, requires the BLM to hold at least four lease sales within ANWR over the next seven years and at least five lease sales in the NPR-A, offering at least four million acres each, over the next 10 years.

Via the Associated Press, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also announced the completion of a land exchange agreement allowing the construction of a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. For years, King Cove residents have pushed for a land route to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay, which they consider essential for emergency medical access. The planned road would be an 11-mile, single-lane gravel route limited to noncommercial use and is not expected to significantly impact wildlife.

NPR-A

More than 18.5 million of the reserve’s 23 million acres (82%) on the Western North Slope are designated as available for leasing under the Trump administration. Lease sales in the reserve were held about every two years from 1999 to 2010 and annually from 2011 through 2019. No lease sales in the NPR-A have been held since the 2019 auction during the first Trump administration. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, requiring at least five lease sales, BLM is taking comments on suggested leasing areas for 30 days, through November 21, 2025.

According to the Alaska Beacon, unlike the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern North Slope, the National Petroleum Reserve on the western side has attracted substantial industry interest. Beneath the reserve lies the oil-rich Nanushuk formation, which has produced major discoveries on both federal and state lands — some of which are already in production, with more expected. ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow project, estimated to yield up to 180,000 barrels per day from reserves of roughly 600 million barrels, is located within the reserve and is poised to become the westernmost producing oil field on the North Slope. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the NPR-A is estimated to contain approximately 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil.

ANWR

Via the Alaska Beacon, two lease sales in ANWR were held, one in January 2021 and one in January 2025, mandated by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The first of those sales drew bids from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, an Alaska state development agency. The January 2021 lease sale was held at the end of Trump’s first term and drew only state interest because Biden had already been certified as president and was on record supporting policies to “end fossil fuels.” In 2023, the Biden administration canceled the oil and gas leases. A federal judge in March said the Biden administration lacked authority to cancel the leases, and Trump’s Interior Department restored them.

The second lease sale in 2025 drew no bids due to the Biden administration making it too restrictive in scope. The Biden administration’s leasing proposal incorporated a range of drilling restrictions, including designating over one million acres of the coastal plain as off-limits for leasing and prohibiting any surface development on 58% of the land involved in the sale. Of the 400,000 acres set to be leased, the BLM anticipated that only 995 surface acres would be developed, as the majority of the drilling would access resources beneath the surface.

Alaska was convinced that the Biden administration deliberately wrote the environmental impact statement and conditions for the sale to draw the fewest and lowest possible bids. The state filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, seeking judicial review of the lease sale plan. Alaska argued that the Biden administration plan violated the 2017 Tax Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

According to the BLM, the 1,563,500-acre Coastal Plain of the ANWR is a frontier basin with strong potential for oil and gas development. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the area is estimated to contain between 4.25 and 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil.

Analysis

Alaska can be the next frontier for American energy abundance if federal regulators get out of the way. With substantial oil and gas reserves, the state has the resources necessary to help meet the supply needs of the U.S. and the rest of the world. Allowing for new lease sales in the ANWR and NPR-A are just two recent steps that the Trump administration has taken to allow Alaska to meet its potential. As IER’s Tom Pyle wrote in RealClearEnergy, “Washington is signaling that Alaska will no longer be viewed solely as a playground for the elite. Equally important, the administration and Congress are committed to streamlining permitting and ending the practice of using bureaucratic delay as a tool of obstruction. These shifts are a clear recognition that Alaska is a cornerstone of America’s energy security.”

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.