A sale on oil and gas drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, this month garnered more than $3.7 million in winning bids, according to an announcement Friday from the federal Bureau of Land Management.
The sale failed to catch the attention of the North Slope’s biggest players, observers say.
ANWR is the nation’s largest wildlife refuge and a habitat for migratory birds and polar bears. The coastal plain of the refuge along the Beaufort Sea, where the tracts up for bid are located, holds the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The area has also been touted by state officials as having the potential for billions of barrels of sellable oil, and the effort to open the region to development stretches back 50 years.
“It has remained a frontier area,” said Kevin Pendergast, Alaska director of the Bureau of Land Management. “Now we are beginning the chapter where we shift from policy to action.”
Officials with the BLM announced the results of the state’s first of four planned lease sales in the region during a livestream Friday morning.
Of the 58 tracts of land up for bid, there were nine bids on five tracts totaling more than 70,000 acres.
“The sum of all winning bids for this sale totals $3,741,528, of which 50% will go to the state of Alaska by law,” Pendergast said.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state investment agency also known as AIDEA, won three of the tracts. HEX Energy LLC, an Alaska-based oil and gas company, won the other two tracts. All five tracts are on the westernmost part of the coastal plain, surrounding existing tracts AIDEA already leases.
READ MORE: A new oil lease sale for the Arctic refuge draws mixed reactions from Alaska Native communities
Larry Persily, a longtime Alaska oil and gas industry observer, said the ANWR lease sale announced Friday was underwhelming.
“Nothing against HEX and nothing against the employees at AIDEA,” Persily said, “but you'd have to look at this and say, ‘Well, this wasn't much, was it?’”
The ANWR bidding was dwarfed by an earlier oil and gas lease sale this year in the North Slope’s National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the west of the refuge. That sale brought in nearly $164 million from major players like ConocoPhillips and Repsol, and more than half of those bids were over $2 million.
Comparatively, the largest ANWR bid in the sale announced Friday was for $1.7 million, highlighting what Persily described as a lack of industry interest in the region.
“The players who would have the billions of dollars to explore, develop, produce are not bidding,” Persily said. “They're not at the table. They have no appetite for it.”
The first sale in the ANWR region was held in January 2021, though the sole company that bid on a lease ended up giving up the tract a year later. A second lease sale, held in 2025, drew zero bids.
The prospect of drilling in ANWR has received mixed responses from Alaska Native communities in the area. Leaders in the village of Kaktovik, the only village within ANWR’s boundaries, have spotlighted the economic benefits that drilling could provide.
“Today’s successful sale proves that when our voices are centered in policymaking conversations, we can strengthen Kaktovik’s future and America’s energy security,” Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation President Charles Lampe said in a statement. “The Kaktovikmiut are the only people who live in ANWR — we have a right to exist and protect our economic and cultural self-determination.”
However, members of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, representing several Alaska Native communities just to the south of the refuge, have long expressed concerns for how development could impact subsistence hunting.
“We have children that are growing up right now that love our tradition, that love our culture, that loves hunting, and that love providing for their families, and that is all at stake,” said Gwich’in Steering Committee Executive Director Kristen Moreland. “This is also the larger responsibility we all share to address climate change and to protect one of the last truly intact ecosystems in the world.”
Environmental groups have long opposed opening ANWR to oil and gas drilling and called this year’s sale a flop.
“This stunning yet predictable failure shows that drilling in this pristine landscape is a dead end for the fossil fuel industry,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Trump administration needs to finally accept reality, listen to the American people and leave the Arctic Refuge alone.”
In a statement, officials with the Alaska Oil and Gas Association congratulated HEX Energy LLC for its successful bids and said the sale was a step toward fostering the country’s energy supply.
“While individual sales vary in size and participation, preserving access to resource development opportunities is essential to supporting future production, strengthening national security, and providing long-term economic benefits to the nation,” AOGA president Steve Wackowski wrote. “Alaska's congressional delegation and the Trump Administration deserve recognition for helping ensure these opportunities remain available."
Trump administration officials also touted the sale as a success. The president has centered “unleashing Alaska’s potential” as part of his goal to increase energy output for the country since he returned to the White House last year.
“This lease sale is another important step toward restoring American Energy Dominance and responsibly developing the vast resources Congress directed us to make available in the Coastal Plain,” Bureau of Land Management Director Steve Pearce said in a statement.
Despite the Trump administration's fervor for drilling in ANWR, Persily said he thinks there is a major factor leading to low turnout among major players: The next administration might be less inclined to allow for development in the refuge.
“How much of your business, how much of your company, how much of your investment, how much of your goodwill do you want to risk that the next White House, the next presidential administration will let you keep your leases, let you get exploration permits, that you will win all the litigation that's going to come up,” Persily said.
Persily said he thinks large companies will likely continue to focus their investments in other parts of the North Slope, like the NPR-A.
Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress directed the federal government to hold three more ANWR lease sales by 2035. Persily doubts there will be much growth in interest.
“I expect future lease sales in ANWR will be similar to this one, except that with a new governor, maybe AIDEA won't go throw more money after bad leases,” Persily said.
