The Daily Populous Friday January 10th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by alaskabeacon.com and submitted by TheArcticBeyond

No bids were received in the second congressionally managed oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Department of the Interior announced on Wednesday.

Had any been received, bids were scheduled to be opened on Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. That Interior agency was charged with managing the refuge leasing program created through a 2017 tax bill passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in his first term.

The absence of bids this time, after very few bids were received in the first lease sale held four years ago, backs up Biden administration officials’ beliefs that drilling in the refuge is bad policy, said a statement released by the Interior Department.

“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,” Acting Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-David said in the statement. “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.”

This week’s lease sale follows one held on Jan. 6, 2021, that drew little bidding, and none from large oil companies. Most bids in that sale were from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, an Alaska state development agency. AIDEA’s head disclosed Wednesday that the agency and the Biden administration have reached an agreement to ensure that the leases acquired in that first sale will not be resold to other parties.

Supporters of oil development in the refuge blamed the Biden administration for the lack of bids this time, saying it put too many restrictions on oil development in the refuge, sometimes referred to as ANWR.

“This is no surprise. From Day 1, Joe Biden and (Interior Secretary) Deb Haaland have sought to illegally shut down any chance of developing ANWR and have said as much. They and their eco-colonialist allies have made every effort to delay, and ultimately kill, any chance of successful ANWR lease sales and have canceled the voices of the Iñupiat Native people of Alaska in the process,” U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in a statement.

Sullivan’s statement referred to the pro-drilling stance of many of the North Slope’s Iñupiat people. He said the second lease sale was structured “to circumvent the federal law Congress passed and President Trump signed” by closing off nearly three-quarters of the coastal plain to new leasing.

“The good news is we will soon be working with the Trump administration which, unlike Biden-Harris, has a proven track record of responsible Alaska resource development, faithfully implementing the laws passed by Congress, and respecting the voices of the Iñupiat people of the North Slope who strongly support the ANWR leasing program. January 20th can’t come soon enough,” Sullivan added.

Trump, who won another term in office, has argued for oil drilling in the refuge. He has claimed, falsely, that it could hold more oil than is in Saudi Arabia.

efforts to open the coastal plain to drilling in past decades were blocked, either by Congress or by a veto issued by then-President Bill Clinton. Along with Clinton, past Democratic presidents have consistently opposed opening the refuge to oil development.

The debate over oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has divided Alaska Natives.

North Slope Iñupiat organizations argue that refuge development offers important economic opportunities, including the possibility of drilling on Native-owned land within the refuge boundaries. Iñupiat organizations have opposed Biden administration Arctic policies, and in the 2024 presidential election, voters on the mostly Iñupiat North Slope favored Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris by about 10 percentage points, a contrast to past patterns of Alaska Indigenous support for Democratic presidential candidates.

In a statement, Nagruk Harcharek, president of the advocacy organization Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, called the Department of Interior statements Wednesday “deeply insulting” to the people of the North Slope. Voice of the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat has supported North Slope oil development and opposed Biden administration policies.

In his statement, Harcharek reiterated that criticism of the Biden administration.

“This last-gasp salvo by a departing administration is no way to create durable policy affecting Indigenous lands, and we urge the Trump-Vance administration to take a different, more inclusive approach when it assumes office in less than two weeks from today, hopefully resulting in more durable policy for the North Slope, the State of Alaska and the nation,” Harcharek said in his statement.

However, some of the staunchest opposition to oil development comes from the Gwich’in Athabascan people of northeastern Alaska and neighboring parts of Canada. The Gwich’in have long been high-profile opponents of Arctic refuge oil development, citing their dependence on and cultural ties to the Porcupine Caribou Herd that uses the refuge’s coastal plain for giving birth to calves.

“A second failed lease sale in the Arctic Refuge also clearly demonstrates that even oil companies recognize what we have known all along: drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the economic risk and liability that results from development on sacred lands without the consent of Indigenous Peoples,” said a statement issued by the Gwich’in Steering Committee, a coalition of Gwich’in tribal members in Alaska and nearby areas of Canada.

“Today marks a significant success in protecting the Arctic Refuge,” Curtis Gilbert, first chief of the Arctic Village Council, a Gwich’in Tribal government. “The total failure of the second lease sale demonstrates the overwhelming public opposition to oil and gas drilling in the Refuge. We continue to maintain our unrelenting opposition to any development on these sacred lands– grounds that are not only central to our cultural and spiritual identity, but fundamental to the subsistence way of life that has sustained our people for countless generations.”

Environmentalists who have fought against refuge drilling for decades joined the Gwich’in in celebrating the lack of bids in the lease sale.

“This charade of lease sales in the Arctic Refuge would be comical if drilling weren’t so dangerous to one of our planet’s most spectacular ecosystems,” Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “While Trump raves about turning the Arctic Refuge into Saudi Arabia, even the most unscrupulous oil companies and banks have stayed clear of the refuge’s precious coastal plain. It’s time to put the Arctic Refuge oil fantasy to bed and stop fleecing American taxpayers.”

In contrast, the state government of Alaska and most Alaska politicians have long supported drilling in the refuge. The first refuge lease sale was held on Jan. 6, 2021, with AIDEA as the main bidder.

AIDEA wound up with seven leases in the refuge coastal plain, but those were later canceled by the Interior Department. The department, which had been sued by Gwich’in and environmental groups for holding the first lease sale, concluded that environmental studies conducted by the previous Trump administration were inadequate. As a result, the department eventually canceled the leases. It conducted a new environmental study that resulted in a set of new environmental protections attached to this second lease sale.

The only two other leases sold in 2021, to a small oil company and to an Anchorage real estate investor, were voluntarily relinquished by those bidders.

The state and AIDEA, its development organization, are engaged in legal battles against the Biden administration over what they say are unfair and illegal restrictions on oil development.

AIDEA has filed multiple lawsuits against the Biden administration over its policies in the refuge, with actions in 2021, 2023 and 2024. The 2021 complaint was dismissed in 2023 by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason.

AIDEA’s board in November approved spending up to $750,000 to continue to press its legal claims concerning Arctic refuge oil drilling and another controversial development, the Ambler Access Project, which would put a road over 200 miles through the Brooks Range foothills to an isolated mining district.

Randy Ruaro, AIDEA’s executive director, said the organization had two reasons for declining to bid this time.

One is that Interior’s new terms make bidding unattractive, not just to AIDEA but to other entities, he said.

Another reason for declining to bid is the newly struck agreement with the Biden administration that ensures that AIDEA’s seven refuge leases will not be sold off, Ruaro said.

“AIDEA will be protected. Its lease rights will be protected from being sold again to someone else,” he said.

That agreement was reached just in the past few days, Ruaro said.

Whatever legal limbo may exist for the leases, AIDEA believes they remain valid and valuable, he said.

“We think there’s billions of barrels of recoverable oil on our leases and in the 1002 area,” he said, referring to a legal name for the refuge’s coastal plain. “They’re economically worth recovering, can be economically developed. And so we’re hopeful that the Trump administration will correct the errors and mistakes of the Biden administration and follow the statute and hold a sale that has terms and conditions that allow for the development of ANWR.”

The state of Alaska has also sued to overturn Biden Arctic refuge policies. A complaint filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage seeks to overturn the environmental stipulations applied to the second lease sale, which the state contends make oil development there economically impossible.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in a statement about the lawsuit released on Tuesday, blasted what he said was the Biden administration’s “continued and irrational opposition” to Arctic oil development – and, like Ruaro, said he looked forward to a reversal under a new Trump administration.

“We have already heard comments from the incoming president that his administration will thankfully take a different tack and open up those areas that are meant to be developed. But unfortunately, we can’t wait for that—we have to challenge this unlawful action now,” Dunleavy, a longtime Trump supporter, said in the statement.

The state in July filed a different lawsuit against the Biden administration that sought billions of dollars in compensation for alleged losses incurred after refuge leases were canceled.

theubster on January 10th, 2025 at 15:08 UTC »

Not to be a debbie downer or anything, but its rough out there when "they didnt burn down a wildlife refuge for oil production yet" is uplifting.

Myvenom on January 10th, 2025 at 14:53 UTC »

Does anyone realize the difficulty and cost associated with making ANWR an operational oilfield? It’s so far away from everything and the infrastructure required to transport oil out of there would be crazy expensive. Oil prices are not nearly high enough to justify it.

This seems like one of those political issues to make both sides fight. I’d be surprised to see any exploration there in my lifetime.

masteremrald on January 10th, 2025 at 13:49 UTC »

Article talks about how the oil companies are just waiting for the trump administration to come and make the deal less restrictive. This may be a short lived victory.