A highly anticipated oil lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Friday generated $3.7 million after failing to attract interest from major drilling companies.
The muted response to the sale in ANWR’s coastal plain was a rebuke to the Trump administration, which hyped the sale as part of its energy dominance agenda. The sale followed earlier, successful lease sales in Alaska and New Mexico that showed signs the oil industry remains largely interested in drilling on public lands.
The sale drew nine bids on five tracts, and the total sum of winning bids for the sale was $3.74 million, of which half goes to the state of Alaska. The bidders were Hex Energy and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. AIDEA is an independently governed public corporation.
“Today’s sale featured multiple bidders and competing bids on multiple tracts, resulting in millions of dollars in new revenue for the American people and for the state of Alaska,” Kevin Pendergast, state director for the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska, said at the sale.
The sale in ANWR’s coastal plain was the first one under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July. It requires four sales in the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain by 2035. It comes as the Trump administration has pushed to open more parts of the United States to oil and gas production, not just in Alaska but also in California and elsewhere. The coastal plain makes up roughly 8 percent of the refuge’s total size.
“While the history of this area is long on policy, a new era of active leasing and exploration is just beginning to unfold,” Pendergast said.
Drilling in ANWR isn’t expected to anytime soon lower oil prices that have spiked up because of the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran that has resulted in the stoppage of oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. In a supplemental environmental review for ANWR’s coastal plain released in November 2024, the Interior Department said that production would be estimated to take place about eight years after a lease sale, according to hypothetical development time frames.
The sale was the third in ANWR since Trump opened the refuge to drilling in 2017; two lease sales have been held in ANWR with mixed results. The January 2021 sale pulled in $14.4 million, while the January 2025 sale yielded no bids, prompting an Alaska state corporation to blame strict conditions tied to the sale.
The Biden administration in 2023 canceled remaining ANWR leases from the 2021 sale, but a federal court last year reinstated those voided leases. While the ANWR lease sales were once estimated to bring in about $1.1 billion over a 10-year period, the Congressional Budget Office said in 2017, actual returns have fallen far short.
Environmental groups and tribal communities opposed drilling in the refuge, citing both its sacred nature to Indigenous peoples as well as the effect that oil and gas activity would have on the Porcupine Caribou Herd and other wildlife.
“Smart companies will know the war in Iran has no impact on the viability of coastal plain leasing, because Arctic projects are high-cost, they take decades to get into production; once they’re in production it takes decades to earn a revenue back to make up for the cost of development,” said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy for the Alaska Wilderness League.
The results of the sale come despite recent polling suggesting drilling in the refuge isn’t popular among Americans. Survey results published in December by Yale University and George Mason University, for example, showed that only 33 percent of registered voters support drilling for oil in ANWR.
Even before the sale took place, it drew mixed reactions.
“I want people to understand that this is not just a lease sale or a piece of paper to the Gwich’in people,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “What is at stake is our way of life, and not even just our way of life; it is for everybody on this earth.”
Also on Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a leading negotiator, called on companies not to bid in the sale.
“To all the oil and gas majors, I have a message for you: I understand you have a job to do,” Heinrich said. “That job never involves drilling in America’s national parks or America’s national wildlife refuges. Don’t bid.”
James Bikales contributed to this report.
