BLM Calls NPR-A Oil Lease Sale Historic, Bids Reach $163 Million

The Bureau of Land Management's two-hour bid reading for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska closed Wednesday with $163 million in high bids across 430 offers from 11 companies, a record that BLM Alaska State Director Kevin Pendergast called the strongest result the reserve has ever produced.

"This is the strongest sale we have ever had in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska by nearly every measure," Pendergast said at the conclusion of the bid opening. "It makes clear that for the NPR-A, despite all the successes to date, the best days are still ahead."

The $163 million total surpasses the $104 million raised during the first competitive NPR-A lease sale in 1999 under the Clinton administration. Senator Dan Sullivan's office noted the figure also dwarfs the $11.3 million generated by the most recent prior sale, placing Wednesday's result more than 1,300 percent above that benchmark. The $163 million in proceeds will be split equally between the federal government and the State of Alaska. Separately, federal law designates half of all future production royalties from the NPR-A for North Slope communities through an established grant program.

The auction covered roughly 1.3 million acres of the nearly 5.5 million acres offered across more than 600 tracts in the 23-million-acre reserve. Some tracts drew as many as six competing offers, with individual bids frequently exceeding $2 million. Bidders sought 10-year leases that could lead to oil and gas activity across a reserve that had long been overshadowed by development at Prudhoe Bay to the east.

Major companies in the auction included ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Repsol, Shell Frontier Oil and Gas, and Oil Search Alaska. ConocoPhillips concentrated its bids near the eastern boundary of the sale area, closest to its Willow project, and did not bid for any tracts within the Nuiqsut Trilateral right-of-way. ExxonMobil took a different approach, bidding within that right-of-way area and emerging as the apparent winner of tracts along the southern shore of Teshekpuk Lake, the North Slope's largest lake. North Slope Exploration, run by geologist Bill Armstrong who helped spark industry interest in the region more than a decade ago by identifying massive oil quantities in previously overlooked rock formations, also won several bids.

The inclusion of tracts around Teshekpuk Lake made the sale immediately contentious. Two lawsuits filed by Native and environmental groups challenge the sale's scope. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason issued an injunction reinstating a right-of-way agreement with Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc., a partnership of Nuiqsut's city and tribal governments and Kuukpik Corp., the village for-profit Native corporation. Bids were accepted for tracts within that right-of-way area nonetheless, even after the court order took effect.

Before Wednesday's sale, oil companies held 1.6 million acres in the reserve. The new auction significantly expanded industry's position there. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, BLM is required to hold at least five NPR-A lease sales by 2035, with each sale making a minimum of 4 million acres available, effectively opening the entire reserve to exploration and drilling in the years ahead.