BLM schedules first ANWR lease sale, opening 400,000 Arctic acres

Federal land managers have put a new slice of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the market, setting up a June 5 lease sale for at least 400,000 acres of the Coastal Plain, the tundra zone nearest Prudhoe Bay and the North Slope oil system. For companies willing to spend, the sale could reopen one of Alaska’s most fought-over energy frontiers. For North Slope communities, the test is whether it leads to real rigs, contracts and infrastructure, or simply another round of paper leases and court fights.

The Bureau of Land Management said sealed bids are due by 4 p.m. AKDT on June 3, with bid opening at 10 a.m. AKDT on June 5. The sale is the first for the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain under the Working Families Tax Cuts, and BLM says the program requires at least four lease sales by 2035, each offering at least 400,000 acres. The agency said the February 3 call for nominations was the next step in the process, and the detailed notice will be posted on its Alaska oil and gas lease sales page.

What is being opened is not the entire refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge spans about 19 million acres, while the Coastal Plain, also called the 1002 Area, covers about 1.57 million acres in northeastern Alaska. Congress first barred oil and gas development there in 1980 under ANILCA, then authorized leasing in 2017. The Congressional Research Service says the U.S. Geological Survey estimates a mean of 7.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil on federal lands in the Coastal Plain, or 10.4 billion barrels when Alaska Native lands and adjacent waters are included. For a state that still depends heavily on petroleum, those numbers matter, even if they never become barrels in the pipeline.

The history of ANWR leasing shows why this sale will be judged by more than headlines. The first lease sale, on January 6, 2021, offered 22 tracts on 1.1 million acres and awarded nine leases. Two were later relinquished, and seven were canceled by the Interior Department in September 2023 before later legal and executive actions moved to restore them. A second sale, scheduled for January 10, 2025, drew no bids at all. That is the benchmark for whether June 5 is consequential: real bids, leases actually awarded, and signs that companies are willing to risk capital in a basin that has already produced one empty sale.

BLM tied the new sale to Executive Order 14153 and Secretary’s Order 3422, both titled Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential. Interior Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor said there had been “three Acts of Congress” and several successful lawsuits affirming the legality of leasing there. Acting BLM Director Bill Groffy pointed to the “record-breaking success” of last month’s National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska lease sale, which brought in 187 leases and $163,696,722 in receipts.

The political divide remains sharp. Governor Mike Dunleavy and Attorney General Treg Taylor have argued that Alaska must fight federal actions that interfere with leasing and development. Conservation and Indigenous groups, including the Gwich’in Steering Committee, say the Coastal Plain is “life itself” for the Gwich’in people and an essential calving ground for the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The refuge also remains critical habitat for caribou and polar bears and carries subsistence significance for Alaska Natives, which is why June 5 will be measured not just in bids, but in what happens on the ground after the papers are opened.