The sale brought in about $3.7 million, nearly half of which came from the state of Alaska’s publicly owned economic development corporation. Most of the 58 tracts available drew no bids at all. No major international oil companies entered bids.
Previous sales mandated by Congress during Mr. Trump’s first term also drew little interest. The handful of leases that had been sold were suspended, and then later canceled, by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But with the war in Iran sending oil prices spiking and the federal government actively encouraging companies to drill, analysts said they had expected a more robust auction this time.
“We’re in the middle of a massive supply shortfall, and if there was ever a time to look past political and reputational risks, it would be now,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.
Mr. Trump has called the refuge “the biggest find anywhere in the world, as big as Saudi Arabia,” and he has directed the government to expedite development in Alaska. The administration declared the day a success.
“The interest was solid,” Kevin J. Pendergast, the director of the Alaska office at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, said as he announced the results. The B.L.M. director, Steve Pearce, hailed what he called “strong industry interest.”
When the auction ended, two companies had bid on five tracts of land totaling about 70,000 acres. About 689,000 acres were offered for leasing.
One was the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned economic development corporation that is currently the only oil and gas leaseholder in the refuge. The authority had three of the winning bids, totaling about $1.5 million. The other winning bids went to Hex L.L.C., an Alaska-based oil and gas production company.
Mr. Book said he believed that many of the largest oil and gas companies had stayed away because of the logistical challenges of drilling in such remote territory, as well as concern that a future administration could again cancel leases.
The top Democrats on environmental committees in Congress, Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, called the results “an embarrassment for the Trump administration.”
In a joint statement, they called the auction “an insult to our entire country, by sacrificing and selling off America’s public lands for pennies on the dollar.”
Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans of Alaska, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge spans roughly 19 million acres along the North Slope of Alaska. One of the last truly wild places in the United States, it is home to migrating caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, millions of birds and other wildlife. [...]
The controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has spanned almost 50 years. Alaska officials and many Republican lawmakers have long sought to allow drilling there, citing the jobs and revenue it would create. But the refuge was protected for decades, largely by Democrats in Congress.
That changed in 2017 when Republicans, in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, pushed through a tax bill allowing sales of leases of up to 1.5 million acres in the refuge.
Two weeks before Mr. Trump left office in 2021, the Interior Department held the first auction. It was a dud. So was the second auction in 2025, ending without a single bidder.
There will be three more sales in the Arctic Refuge between now and 2035, all mandated in Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill that passed last year.
by Lisa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Christopher Miller for The New York Times
[ed. They can keep banging away but the economics, legal challenges and public blowback aren't worth the effort (as shown). Plus, development is currently moving westward toward NPR-A, not east. By law, the area is designated "Wilderness" and if that category of protection is breached then all environmental protections everywhere become irrelevant, everything is open to development, even places like Yellowstone. Fun fact: I permitted the first seismic exploration of the refuge back in the 80s (they wanted to use explosives, I made them use thumpers).]
