The Trump administration has jump-started plans for offshore oil and gas lease sales, but it’s also touting a new area to explore: the High Arctic.
The United States has been laying the groundwork for expanding its territory off the coast of Alaska for years, and under President Donald Trump the largely unknown area may be opened to offshore drilling.
The Interior Department didn’t provide many details about plans for the High Arctic in a news release last month. The area is believed to be rich in critical minerals and a potential supply of oil and gas. The offshore energy industry has already backed recent steps taken by the administration, urging officials to open the door to development in the Arctic.
“Our long-term energy, national, and economic security will depend upon the U.S. taking action today through enabling policies so that we can attract investment and compete globally,” Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said in an emailed statement.
Still, the Trump administration’s plan to wade into international maritime law is causing consternation in China. Concerns also are coming from some U.S. environmentalists, who argue that sensitive Arctic ecosystems could suffer from expanded drilling or untested deep-sea mining.
“While opening any more waters to offshore oil and gas drilling is reckless, opening the High Arctic is particularly so,” Kristen Monsell, oceans program legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
Here are answers to three questions about the High Arctic.
Where is the new area?
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an arm of the Interior Department that manages offshore energy in federal waters, released a map of the agency’s existing and new planning areas last month.
The High Arctic region sits above two other areas — the Chukchi and Beaufort seas — that border Alaska’s North Slope. The new area encompasses a region of the Arctic Ocean that the U.S. recently laid claim to.
Under international law, countries are generally understood to have sovereignty over waters that extend up to 200 nautical miles from their coastline, according to the State Department.
Beyond that is a more distant region of the seas known as the “extended continental shelf,” which countries can also exert control over. International maritime law lays out processes by which nations can claim offshore waters.
A 1982 United Nations treaty, called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, describes how countries can claim waters hundreds of miles from shore after a complex assessment of seabed conditions.
Though the U.S. has never signed the treaty, the State Department announced in December 2023 under former President Joe Biden that it had determined the borders of the U.S. extended continental shelf in accordance with the treaty. The country claimed jurisdiction over some 152,000 square nautical miles in the Arctic.
Last month, BOEM announced its jurisdiction in the Arctic had grown, which reflects the new territory claims, according to the agency. The Trump administration is potentially looking to make over 109 million acres of that ocean zone available for drilling and mining.
China disputes those borders. Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said the U.S. had “illegally delimited” its expanded territory at a news conference with reporters in April.
“The U.S. move to authorize exploration and exploitation of mineral resources on its so-called ‘extended continental shelf’ violates international law and harms the collective interests of the international community,” Guo said, referring to Trump’s April 24 executive order aimed at speeding industry exploration of critical mineral deposits in federal waters.
An unidentified White House official told POLITICO’s E&E News in a statement that “China is moving aggressively forward with seabed mining, and it is important that the U.S. does not fall behind. In our pursuit of critical minerals in the seabed, the United States will continue to abide by our domestic laws … that govern U.S. private sector deep sea exploration and commercial recovery activities in areas within and beyond national jurisdiction, respectively.”
The official added: “The United States will continue to enforce sovereign rights over our 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The ‘High Arctic’ zone extends to the limits of the our continental shelf.”
In a statement, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be named said “the United States and its neighbors will need to establish maritime boundaries in the future.”
How did the U.S. claim the region?
U.S. research on the extended continental shelf has spanned several administrations.
For about a decade, two research vessels — one American, the other Canadian — paired up on voyages in the Arctic Ocean, which ended around 2016, according to data from NOAA.
The U.S. Geological Survey also worked on the research in areas that include the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea and Gulf of Mexico, which was renamed the Gulf of America by Trump. The cost of the research in these areas — spread between various agencies — ran over $100 million, according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
As a newly defined region of U.S. territory, the High Arctic area has borders that are partially contested. For example, according to a State Department website, the United States’ extended continental shelf “partially overlaps” with Canada’s.
The area of overlap is more than 94,000 square miles, Charlotte MacLeod, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, said in a statement.
“Canada, like all Arctic Ocean coastal states, remains committed to settling continental shelf overlap areas peacefully and in accordance with international law,” MacLeod said. “Canada and the U.S. are in frequent communication with regards to the continental shelf in the Arctic and have expressed their commitment to the orderly settlement of overlapping submission.”
In Congress, some Democrats have introduced bills this year to restrict offshore drilling. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) issued a news release April 22 calling the Arctic a “bellwether for climate collapse” and the new potential for oil and gas drilling in the High Arctic a “clear sign that no corner of the Arctic is safe from corporate polluters under the Trump administration.”
The bills are unlikely to pass in the GOP-controlled body.
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski, (R-Alaska) asked an Interior nominee at a Senate hearing last week to consult with the Alaskan delegation on drilling in the High Arctic and other areas off the coast of Alaska.
“I get where the administration is coming from: It’s basically put everything on the table and then figure out how we might want to winnow some of this back,” she said at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. “In Alaska, there are places that we seek to develop aggressively, responsibly, and then there are areas that we don’t.”
Will the High Arctic draw industry interest?
Prior research from USGS has shown potential oil and gas reserves around the Arctic Ocean. The agency has also found “high concentrations of critical and strategic seafloor minerals.”
In the short term, the oil industry might be unlikely to spend money on exploration in the region.
“It’s quite a ways from shore,” said Larry Persily, a former U.S. coordinator for an Alaska natural gas pipeline project. “I’d be surprised if anybody bid on it. … It just doesn’t seem there’s an appetite for that kind of huge risk when there’s less risky prospects in the Gulf of Mexico and the Permian Basin.”
But Mark Myers, a member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, told E&E News that the reserves of critical minerals are “highly significant and certainly of interest.”
Amy Gartman, a research oceanographer at USGS, said in an interview that the High Arctic area appears to have unusually high concentrations of scandium, a rare earth element used in alloys. But she stressed that there is “no indication” to date that the minerals will be extractable, or commercially viable for industry, in this area of the Arctic.
Exerting control over the region could therefore have national security implications, as ocean mining is generally regulated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
“An established [extended continental shelf] would prohibit foreign countries from pursuing exploration or exploitation contracts through the ISA for areas located within another country’s ECS,” according to a 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service. “In addition, an extension of the outer limits of the U.S. ECS to include mineral-rich areas would be a potential strategy to access mineral resources under sole U.S. authority, rather than under the authority of the ISA.”
The ISA has spent years working to establish an international agreement over how to regulate deep-sea mining. On April 29, BOEM announced it would open a comment period for the agency’s planning of offshore oil and gas lease sales — including in the High Arctic.
So far, industry interest in deep-sea mining has focused on the Pacific, where a Canada-based business called the Metals Co. applied last week for a license from the U.S.
The offshore energy industry has applauded the move to expand drilling, with the National Ocean Industries Association pointing to information from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs showing that China has invested some $90 billion in projects north of the Arctic Circle. And Russia has accounted for 50 to 60 percent of Arctic investment, according to a report from Business Index North, which focuses on the Arctic.
“Supportive policies that align with the administration’s broader energy strategy can strengthen national security, enable responsible development of vital oil, gas, and mineral resources, and encourage cost-effective, private-sector-driven infrastructure,” said Milito of the ocean industries group. “By maintaining access and flexibility, we ensure the U.S. is positioned to lead when the opportunity arises — without forcing premature action.”
