Trump Administration Reaffirms Cook Inlet Offshore Oil and Gas Lease Sale Based on Environmental Study Completed Without Public Input

The federal agency responsible for overseeing offshore oil and gas leasing announced today it has completed a court-mandated environmental review for a lease sale in Cook Inlet. 

In 2024, in a victory for groups that had challenged the sale, a federal district court in Alaska ordered the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to complete a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for Lease Sale 258. 

The court, in its order, agreed with the groups in finding that the original study underpinning the sale’s approval failed to meaningfully analyze alternatives and the harms the sale may cause to critically endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Among other issues, the court found BOEM failed to address the issue of harmful and disruptive vessel noise that affects belugas’ ability to hunt, avoid obstacles, and find each other. All of this, in addition to cumulative and synergistic effects of spills, contaminants, and climate change, threatens the whales’ survival.

The court suspended the lone lease that had been bid on by Hilcorp Alaska until BOEM completed the SEIS. The SEIS allowed BOEM the opportunity to include additional protections for whales or to remove the leased block from the sale.   

After initially announcing in April that it would hold a public hearing and take public comments on the SEIS, BOEM reversed course in September and cancelled all plans for public process. Despite repeated efforts by the plaintiffs and their lawyers to seek information and provide public input, BOEM moved forward with the SEIS without releasing a draft study for public comment, without holding public hearings and without giving the plaintiffs and the public any opportunity to weigh in. 

And in its final SEIS, BOEM chose to simply reaffirm the sale without requiring any additional protections for belugas.

“This whole process has been a black box,” said Earthjustice attorney Hannah Foster. “We won our challenge against this lease sale because Interior failed to adequately consider sale alternatives and the impacts to the endangered beluga whales that will be harmed by blaring vessel noise and other oil industry operations. Yet BOEM has now reaffirmed the sale without seriously considering new alternatives or imposing any new measures to protect belugas. We are still reviewing the documents, which were released suddenly following multiple requests for BOEM to take public input.  BOEM completely ignored all those requests.” 

 “The Trump administration is rolling out the lease sale red carpet for the oil and gas industry in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, hiding behind a legally suspect environmental review,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Irene Gutierrez, Senior Attorney. “Leasing and drilling in Cook Inlet will recklessly imperil critically endangered beluga whales and other wildlife, all to enrich fossil fuel interests at the expense of our future.”

“BOEM’s decision to conduct the whole process in secrecy represents the federal government’s new approach to cutting the public out of decisions about our waters, and favoring the billionaire class and giant corporations over the people who call this place home. We are disgusted by this rushed and sloppy process on this final SEIS,” says Bridget Maryott, Co-Executive Director at Cook Inletkeeper. “If this is an indicator of the federal government’s willingness to engage community members, it’s a very bad sign for the upcoming 11 Cook Inlet lease sales that are planned between now and 2032. All citizens should be angry and concerned for our right to control what happens in our own backyard.”   

“The Trump administration’s reckless plan ignores the cumulative, unaddressed harms pushing Cook Inlet’s critically endangered beluga whales toward extinction,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “A single oil spill would be a death sentence for our Cook Inlet wildlife, fisheries and the coastal communities that depend on a healthy ocean. It’s time to focus on cleaning up Cook Inlet for future generations of belugas and Alaskans instead of polluting it with more risky oil and gas drilling.”

“It is outrageous that this Administration is abdicating its responsibility to protect our endangered beluga whales and their habitats in Cook Inlet, the ecosystem that sustain our subsistence and commercial fisheries, and the lives, livelihoods, and health of our communities,” said Pamela Miller, Executive Director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. “BOEM’s circumvention of the public process is not acceptable.”

Background

Lease Sale 258, held by DOI in December 2022, opened nearly a million acres of federal waters in Southcentral Alaska to oil and gas leasing. That initial sale was canceled in May 2022 but then was required later that year to move forward under a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act. When the sale was offered, it resulted in just one bid by Hilcorp Alaska. The company paid $63,983 to lease a tract totaling 5,693 acres for oil and gas drilling. That area overlaps with feeding territory for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales.

Excluding Lease Sale 258, Lower Cook Inlet is facing a total of 11 additional separate offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next seven years. Five of these are proposed in the Trump administration’s new offshore drilling plan. Six more sales were mandated by Congress when it passed its budget reconciliation bill. The first of those sales, BBC1, is set to take place in March 2026.  The government’s position is that the reconciliation bill sales do not require a NEPA process, meaning they will not consider any public comments or hold public hearings as is traditionally done.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice filed the lawsuit challenging Lease Sale 258. The Center and NRDC represented themselves while Earthjustice represented the Center, Cook Inletkeeper, Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, and Alaska Community Action on Toxics.