The Department of the Interior today announced that the Bureau of Land Management received no bids for the congressionally mandated oil and gas lease sale for the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Arctic Refuge). The deadline to submit bids was Monday, January 6.
The expired deadline to submit bids concludes the second congressionally mandated sale required by the 2017 Tax Act, which directed the BLM to hold two lease sales in the Coastal Plain within seven years of enactment. The first sale, held by the previous administration, similarly demonstrated low interest, yielding a total of $14.4 million in high bids on 11 tracts. Congress included the two lease sales in the Tax Act on the grounds that they would generate approximately $2 billion in revenue over 10 years.
Of the nine leases sold during the previous Administration's sale, the two held by oil companies were canceled and refunded at the request of the lessees, and the remaining seven, held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, were canceled by Secretary of the Interior Haaland due to the multiple legal deficiencies in the underlying record. There are currently no existing leases in the Coastal Plain.
"The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along - there are some places too special and sacred to put at risk with oil and gas drilling. This proposal was misguided in 2017, and it's misguided now," said Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis. "The BLM has followed the law and held two lease sales that have exposed the false promises made in the Tax Act. The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere; we'd suggest that's a prudent place to start, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the world."
The Arctic Refuge sustains people, wildlife and fish in the northeastern corner of Alaska, a vast landscape of rich cultural traditions and thriving ecological diversity. The lands and waters are a critical home to migratory and resident wildlife, have unique recreational values, and contain the largest designated Wilderness within the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Refuge is located on the traditional homelands of the Iñupiat people of the north and the Gwichʼin people of interior Alaska and Canada.
