The Bureau of Land Management held the latest oil and gas lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain on Friday, a sale that awarded five tracts to two bidders for a combined $3.7 million. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned corporation that already holds leases in the region, won three tracts. Hex Energy LLC, a company whose operations were not immediately described in public filings, won two tracts. Together the leased parcels cover about 72,000 acres of the nearly 690,000 acres that the federal government had placed on the auction block.
Kevin Pendergast, the BLM’s Alaska state director, characterized the sale as the beginning of sustained commercial interest in the refuge. “A new era of active leasing and exploration is just beginning to unfold,” Pendergast said in a statement released by the agency.
AIDEA’s participation was anticipated. The state corporation’s board last month approved additional funding for a seismic survey program aimed at locating oil formations and for the purchase of leases in this sale round. The authority already owns leasehold interests from previous sales in the refuge’s 1.5-million-acre coastal plain, the only portion of the 19-million-acre refuge where Congress authorized oil and gas development under a 2017 tax law.
The Biden administration had paused leasing in the refuge after issuing the first sale in early 2021, which drew minimal interest and was later voided over environmental review deficiencies. The Trump administration restarted the leasing program in 2025, and this sale is the second since the program resumed. A message seeking comment from Hex Energy was not immediately returned Friday.
Environmental groups and Indigenous communities that rely on the refuge’s caribou herd and other wildlife have opposed development in the area for decades. Critics said Friday’s lease results show the oil industry remains reluctant to invest heavily in such a remote and ecologically sensitive location, where development costs are high and infrastructure is nearly nonexistent.
“Even with a friendly administration, the oil companies are not lining up to drill the Arctic Refuge,” said Nathan Gordon Jr., an activist with the Alaska Wilderness League, in a statement. “The tepid response today shows that this is not a viable place for oil development.”
The coastal plain is the calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd, a species that sustains the Gwich’in people who live along its migration route. Several Gwich’in villages have opposed any industrial development in the area. The Inupiat community of Kaktovik, located within the refuge’s coastal plain, has been more supportive of oil development as a potential source of jobs and revenue.
No drilling or oil production is currently taking place on any of the leases issued to date. AIDEA’s seismic survey program, if it proceeds, could help determine whether commercially viable oil reservoirs exist under the coastal plain tundra. The BLM estimates the plain may hold between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, though those figures rely on limited exploration data from the 1980s.
Friday’s lease sale is the second conducted under the Trump administration since the program resumed. A previous sale in January drew four bids from AIDEA and one from a small independent company, Regenerate Alaska, for a total of $14.4 million. The Biden-era sale in 2021 attracted no bids from private companies and only one from AIDEA, which later withdrew its bid.
The BLM is also planning a lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a separate 23-million-acre tract west of the refuge, later this year. Environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging both programs, arguing the agencies have not adequately assessed the cumulative impacts of oil development on the region’s wildlife and climate.