Western Arctic Lease Sale Auctions Off More than a Million Acres of Ecologically Sensitive Lands for Oil and Gas Drilling

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced results today from an oil and lease sale in the Western Arctic. The massive, proposed lease sale held by BLM – the first in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska since 2019 – offered more than 600 tracts totaling more than 5.5 million acres for oil and gas drilling.  

Oil companies ended up bidding on approximately 200 tracts, totaling about 1.3 million acres.  

The lease sale threatens to bring a new onslaught of harmful oil and gas drilling and other industrial activity to ecologically sensitive areas, especially around Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River. These lands, none of which have ever seen development, provide essential habitat for wildlife and people who depend on these healthy, intact ecosystems for their food security and continued ways of life. Also, aggressive new oil development in the Western Arctic would further jeopardize our urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels to protect the climate. 

Several different oil companies bid on the tracts, with the most frequent bidders including ConocoPhillips, Repsol and Shell Frontier, ExxonMobil Alaska, and North Slope Exploration.   

“Today’s public-lands auction jeopardizes at-risk Arctic wildlife, burdens people who rely on this irreplaceable landscape, and threatens further harm to the climate,” said Earthjustice Attorney Jeremy Lieb. “With climate change intensifying and energy prices skyrocketing, it’s clear that the best way forward is switching to low-cost, clean energy sources – not attempting to produce more expensive, ecologically destructive Arctic oil.”  

“Trump wanted Big Oil to go big in the Arctic, grabbing as many leases as possible and pursuing reckless drilling, despite the many significant risks to the people, species, and surrounding ecosystem,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth U.S. “The results of this sale will spell disaster for the surrounding area. We will continue to see the Trump administration in court over its blatant disregard of federal law and complete failure to protect this vulnerable and rapidly shrinking area of our planet.” 

The opened bids include tracts within a conservation right-of-way that was upheld by an Alaska federal court ruling on Monday in a case brought by Nuiqsut Trilateral, Inc. The right-of-way was established to protect the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd from oil and gas drilling and other industrial activities. Earthjustice is not part of that lawsuit. 

Background 

The Western Arctic is the largest single tract of public land in the United States and remains largely undeveloped. When Congress transferred management of the Western Arctic from the U.S. Navy to the Bureau of Land Management in 1976, it recognized the area’s rich ecological values and required BLM to protect those values. When Congress authorized leasing and oil development in 1980, it again directed the federal government to ensure the protection of the Western Arctic’s ecological and cultural resources. 

Two groups represented by Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, restarted litigation last month challenging today’s lease sales and the underlying management plan, or Integrated Activity Plan, that opens 18.5 million acres within the 23-million-acre Reserve to potential oil and gas drilling and infrastructure.  Three other lawsuits also challenge the lease sale or decisions related to it.   

The groups assert the federal government is failing to comply with laws requiring it to protect significant ecological and cultural values in the Reserve, accurately assess and consider impacts to the environment, and consider alternatives to its leasing plan. 

Today’s lease sale results were announced via livestream by the Bureau of Land Management. Critics of the lease sale offered commentary via a TikTok livestream hosted by Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, an Indigenous group represented by Trustees for Alaska in one of the lawsuits challenging the leasing program.