Key Takeaways
Alaska has asked a federal court to enjoin oil and gas leases sold in a lease sale in the ANWR to be held on January 10 and declare the sale illegal, even though Alaska strongly supports ANWR oil and gas exploration and development.
Alaska is convinced the Biden Administration deliberately wrote the environmental impact statement and conditions for the sale to draw the fewest and lowest possible bids and may preclude any future lease sales.
The state argues that the Biden administration did this to thwart the objectives of the law passed in 2017, which directed lease sales to be held there.
The lease sale is the second one in the ANWR, with the first being held after Biden’s certification in 2021, which limited interest because of President-elect Biden’s known antipathy towards fossil fuels.
Alaska economic development projects have been frequent targets for the Biden Administration, with huge land withdrawals on and offshore, denial of road permits required under federal law, and many others which Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has chronicled for redress by President-elect Trump, who has been much more open to Alaska’s economic development needs.
The congressionally mandated oil and gas lease sale on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is being contested by the state of Alaska. The lease sale for 400,000 acres in the northwest portion of the 1.6-million-acre Coastal Plain of the ANWR is to be held on January 10. Congress mandated the sale in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—a law that required two ANWR lease sales to be offered within seven years of the law’s enactment. The 400,000-acre lease offering represents the absolute minimum allowed under federal law. Alaska argues that the administration’s “last-minute actions to restrict and complicate the Coastal Plain development program” make the program reach a “point of total dysfunction.”
In Alaska v. Department of Interior, Alaska has petitioned a federal court to block any oil and gas leases from being sold in the upcoming auction and to declare the Biden administration’s proposed sale plan unlawful. The state filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, seeking judicial review of the lease sale plan. Alaska argues that the plan violates the 2017 Tax Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-run entity, filed a similar lawsuit in the same court on December 20, 2024.
According to Bloomberg, Alaska claims the coastal plain drilling restrictions are illegal because they render the lands “undevelopable” and ensure that no future lease sales can be held within the refuge. The plan thwarts Congress’ “express purpose of having actual oil and gas development occur within the coastal plain,” the state claims in its lawsuit. Revenues the state could earn from oil drilling within the refuge will be lost if the sale is allowed to stand, the state claims. The state asked the court to declare the Bureau of Land Management’s final environmental review for the sale, the agency’s record of decision, and notice for the lease sale as arbitrary and capricious. It also sets them aside and prevents the BLM from issuing any leases sold. In other words, Alaska strongly supports ANWR lease sales. Still, it appears the Biden Administration appears to have deliberately sought to make them so unattractive that it limits and reduces bids and may foreclose future sales entirely.
The Biden administration’s leasing proposal incorporates a range of drilling restrictions, including designating over 1 million acres of the coastal plain as off-limits for leasing and prohibiting any surface development on 58% of the land involved in the sale. Of the 400,000 acres set to be leased, the Bureau of Land Management anticipates that only 995 surface acres will be developed, as the majority of the drilling will access resources beneath the surface, according to Bloomberg.
Restricting fossil fuels development was a primary policy objective of the Biden administration, which has done a lot of damage to energy development in Alaska, including:
- Canceling all nine ANWR leases obtained in the first ANWR lease sale held during the first Trump administration with Biden’s Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service claiming that the Trump lease sale was “seriously flawed and based on a number of fundamental legal deficiencies.” That sale drew little interest because Biden had already been certified for president and was on record supporting policies to “end fossil fuels.”
- Closing off 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), roughly the size of Indiana, which Congress established in 1923 as a petroleum reserve. The Biden administration, however, did approve ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion Willow oil and gas project in the NPR-A, albeit in a scaled-down form compared to the initial proposal.
- Denying a permit to the state for the Ambler Road mining project, which sought a right of way to access a mining district rich in copper and other minerals. Despite being guaranteed access under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Biden-Harris administration suspended the necessary water and wetlands permits for the road, effectively disregarding a law that has been in place for over 40 years, which mandates the Secretary of the Interior to issue permits for this project.
- Restricting 28 million acres of public lands in Alaska—nearly 7% of the state’s total land area—from oil, gas, or mineral extraction.
- Extending the oil and gas leasing ban to the entire Northern Bering Sea. Biden invoked his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a federal law, to withdraw 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea and other federal offshore areas, totaling 625 million acres, from the Department of the Interior’s oil and gas leasing program.
President Biden has a long-standing opposition to oil development in Alaska, beginning with his vote against the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1973 during his first year as a Senator.
President-elect Donald Trump said he wants to fully open the refuge to drilling and reverse Biden’s anti-fossil energy policies to ensure Americans have affordable and reliable energy and make America energy-dominant. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan compiled a list of over 60 Biden-era decisions that negatively impacted oil and gas production in Alaska, including the suspension of oil activities in the ANWR. This list may serve as a blueprint for undoing the Biden administration’s regional policies, beginning on Day 1 of Trump’s second term.
Certain regulations from the Biden administration may prove challenging to undo swiftly, such as the environmental impact statement for the ANWR and the offshore oil and gas leasing ban in the Northern Bering Sea. However, Congress might leverage the Congressional Review Act to overturn the environmental impact statement for the ANWR, effectively reverting the oil program to the environmental review conducted during President Trump’s first term. This move would also remove the restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, such as limiting leasing to just 400,000 acres of the ANWR. Additionally, Congress could seek to lift the offshore leasing ban through the Budget Reconciliation Bill, which is currently being drafted.
Conclusion
The state of Alaska has sued the Biden administration over the ANWR lease sale to be held on January 10, citing the sale as illegal as it violates four U.S. laws. Alaska claims the coastal plain drilling restrictions in the Biden lease plan are illegal because they render the lands to be leased “undevelopable,” and they ensure that no future lease sales can be held within the refuge, losing revenues for the state from oil drilling within the refuge. The state asked the court to declare the Bureau of Land Management’s final environmental review for the sale, the agency’s record of decision, and notice for the lease sale as arbitrary and capricious. It also sets them aside and prevents the BLM from issuing any leases sold. Congress could use the Congressional Review Act to invalidate the Biden administration’s environmental impact statement for the ANWR, reverting the ANWR oil program to the environmental review conducted during President Trump’s first term.
