The Interior Department received no bids in an oil and gas lease sale off the southern coast of Alaska on Wednesday.
The results of the sale are a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to expand domestic oil and gas production, especially in Alaska, where it has proposed holding potentially dozens of new lease sales in the coming years.
While the U.S. has seen record oil production in recent years, industry interest in drilling in Alaska has waned as energy producers focused on easier and cheaper drilling targets in the Lower 48 states.
The most recent sale off in the waters off Alaska, held by the Biden administration in 2022, drew only one bid, one of the smallest results ever for a federal offshore lease sale. Republicans and state officials had blamed those results on the Biden administration’s stance toward new oil and gas development.
