en.Wedoany.com Reported - U.S. Interior Department officials said the Trump administration recently sold only five tracts of land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for a total of $3.7 million in an oil and gas lease auction.
The auction offered 58 parcels covering 689,000 acres (about 278,800 hectares) within the refuge. The refuge is known for its pristine habitat, home to polar bears, caribou, and migratory birds. Ultimately, only five parcels (about 70,000 acres) received nine bids, with the sole bidders being Hex Energy LLC and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA). The single highest winning bid was $1.7 million from Hex Energy for Parcel 112.
The auction was seen as the latest test of industry interest in drilling in northern Alaska, a region where development involves decades-long timelines and billions of dollars in investment. This sale was the first of four lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge mandated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump. The move aligns with his commitment to boost domestic energy development and has support from Alaska state officials and some Indigenous groups who want to open the refuge to drilling to create jobs and reverse a decline in the state's oil production.
"Done the right way, in consultation with the original stewards of these lands, development has proven beneficial for our region," Nagruk Harcahrek, CEO of the Arctic Inupiat Voices, said in an email statement.
To date, oil and gas companies have shown little interest in the 1.5 million-acre coastal area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge along the Beaufort Sea, even though the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the area contains up to 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. The Biden administration held a sale of 400,000 acres in the refuge in January 2025 as required by Congress but received no bids from energy companies. The region's first sale in 2021 also attracted few buyers. With U.S. oil production at record levels due to drilling in more accessible areas like Texas and New Mexico, companies have limited spending on new projects, focusing instead on returning cash to shareholders.
An oil and gas group said Alaska is an important region for the industry. "Alaska's resources are critical to U.S. energy security, and we expect continued investment across the state," a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute said in an email. Unlike the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which is adjacent to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and located on the North Slope, this 19-million-acre wildlife refuge has no roads, facilities, or other infrastructure. Oil companies spent $163 million to acquire new leases in the National Petroleum Reserve in an auction earlier this year, where a liquefied natural gas plant is under development.
The state agency Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is currently the sole holder of oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with six parcels, but these lands remain undeveloped. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the ancestral home of the Inupiat and Gwich'in peoples, who are divided over oil and gas development. "Some places are too important to sacrifice," Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, said in a press call. "Tomorrow's lease sale is about far more than economics or development. It's about whether our voices, our culture, and our way of life matter."
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