An auction to drill on an untouched wildlife refuge in Alaska will take place in June, the Trump administration said.
The Interior Department unveiled plans Friday to sell the rights to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which could contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
This follows the Interior Department lifting drilling restrictions imposed by then-President Biden.
The June 5 auction will also be the first lease sale in the Coastal Plain under President Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which requires four sales in the 1.5-million-acre section of the area within a decade.
“President Trump has long supported Alaska’s important contribution to American energy dominance and Interior is proud to take the necessary and durable steps to unleash these important resources on behalf of the American people,” Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor said in a statement.
While the Trump administration says the upcoming sale will unlock Alaskan energy, opponents say that drilling in the refuge would destroy the animals and landscape, which is home to bears, wolves, caribou, muskoxen and more than 200 species of birds. What’s more, the Gwich’in inhabitants consider the coastal plain sacred.
However, leaders of Kaktovik, an Inupiaq community within the refuge, have welcomed the prospect of drilling.
The upcoming sale will be the third lease sale this year in Alaska, but a dud auction would prove to be a blow in the Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas development in the state.
Last month’s sale for the Cook Inlet basin yielded no bids, but the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska drew hundreds of bids even amid litigation against the sale.
The success signaled a “robust and continuing demand for Alaskan energy, underscoring the need for more opportunities like the Coastal Plain sale,” Bill Groffy, the Bureau of Land Management’s acting director, said in a statement.
A January 2025 auction, shortly before Mr. Biden left office, for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge saw no bidders.
