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A congressionally-ordered oil and gas lease sale in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ended with a whimper this week, as no oil companies submitted bids for the right to drill in the refuge.
The sale marks the second time in four years that an attempt to sell oil leases in the refuge has fallen flat, suggesting that President-elect Donald Trump's "energy dominance" initiative may be dead on arrival.
Both sales were required by a 2017 tax bill passed by Republicans which predicted the leases would generate $2 billion in royalties over 10 years. In the first sale, held during the first Trump administration, only half of the parcels received bids, and all but two of those came from the State of Alaska itself. The sale brought in less than $15 million in bids.
“The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along: There are some places too special and sacred to exploit with oil and gas drilling,” said Laura Daniel-Davis, the Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Davis suggested that the industry start with the millions of acres of existing leases it already holds, rather than engaging in speculative leasing in the Arctic.
The New York Times reported that major banks have declined to finance drilling in the refuge, citing high costs and the lack of existing facilities.
Law professor eviscerates Utah land grab lawsuit
Law professor John Leshy penned a devastating op-ed taking apart Utah's lawsuit attempting to seize control of 18 million acres of national public land. Writing in the New York Times, Leshy, the former top lawyer at the Interior department, says that Utah is using "a mishmash of arguments that the property clause does not mean what it says," while ignoring a string of Supreme Court decisions dating back to the post-Civil War era.
Leshy warns that if the Court were to somehow accept Utah's arguments regarding the property clause, America's national parks would be at risk—including Utah's "Mighty Five"—along with all of the nation's public lands. Last August, Professor Leshy spoke to CWP about Utah's lawsuit on our podcast, The Landscape.
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The total failure of the second lease sale demonstrates the overwhelming public opposition to oil and gas drilling in the Refuge. We continue to maintain our unrelenting opposition to any development on these sacred lands—grounds that are not only central to our cultural and spiritual identity, but fundamental to the subsistence way of life that has sustained our people for countless generations.”
