Two months after a lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge failed to draw any bids, the Trump administration Department of the Interior said on Thursday it is taking steps to sell leases across much more territory in the refuge.

All of the 1.56-million-acre refuge coastal plan will be opened to oil leasing, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. The Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, will make that happen, reversing Biden administration environmental protections in the area, he said.

“It’s time for the U.S. to embrace Alaska’s abundant and largely untapped resources as a pathway to prosperity for the Nation, including Alaskans,” Burgum said in the statement. “For far too long, the federal government has created too many barriers to capitalizing on the state’s energy potential. Interior is committed to recognizing the central role the State of Alaska plays in meeting our nation’s energy needs, while providing tremendous economic opportunity for Alaskans.”

The department did not release any more information about the specific steps to be taken, and no new rule proposals were issued as of Thursday afternoon.

Intentions for more ANWR oil development were already declared in an Inauguration Day executive action issued by President Donald Trump called “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” They were also declared in a follow-up secretarial order that Burgum issued on Feb. 3.

In addition to planning for expanded ANWR leasing, Interior’s BLM is taking steps to expand oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, on the west side of the North Slope, Burgum said in his statement. Most of the refuge will be open to development, reversing protections that had kept about half of it off-limits, Burgum said.

And the BLM will be revoking Biden administration actions that maintained protections for lands along the trans-Alaska pipeline corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River, Burgum said in his statement.

Those plans were included as well in the presidential and secretarial orders issued in January and February. They would affect several Biden-era environmental policies in Alaska that Gov. Mike Dunleavy and other Trump supporters have asked the new administration to revoke.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been the subject of decades of debate and controversy. Alaska politicians, Inupiat organizations and other development supporters say the refuge’s coastal plain could produce a new oil bonanza; environmentalists and some Indigenous tribal members say it should be protected because of its importance to the Porcupine Caribou herd — one of the few tundra caribou herds not in decline — and other Arctic natural resources.

Mixed responses

In a statement, Dunleavy called Burgum’s announcement “more great news for Alaska.”

“I want to thank President Trump and Interior Secretary Burgum for their commitment to work on behalf of Alaska to ensure that our great state and its resources can continue to be a solution for many of America’s challenges. The news today will provide more investment opportunities, more jobs, and a better future for Alaskans. We look forward to our continued work with President Trump and his administration to move Alaska and our country forward,” Dunleavy said in his statement

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, in his annual speech to the Legislature on Thursday, celebrated Burgum’s announcement and praised Trump for his executive orders.

“Alaska has never seen such a positive signal directly from a U.S. president that we should pursue our vision of a state that seeks private sector wealth and job creation with a federal government that is a partner in opportunity, not a hostile opponent,” Sullivan said in the speech.

That includes reinstatement of the ANWR leasing program, “which was in the law,” Sullivan said, referring to the 2017 tax act that mandated at least two lease sales in the refuge coastal plan.

Burgum’s announcement also got a favorable response from Inupiat leaders on the North Slope who have supported oil development there as a vital source of revenue and jobs..

One was Charles Lampe, president of Kaktovik Iñupiat Corp., the for-profit corporation owned by the Native residents of a village at the northern edge of the refuge. Among many in Kaktovik, a village of about 270 people, oil development in the refuge coastal plain has long been viewed as a promising local opportunity.

“We applaud today’s decision by DOI and Secretary Burgum, which upholds both the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Act and overwhelming support from our community for development opportunities on the Coastal Plain,” Lampe said in a statement. “As the only community within ANWR’s 19-million-acre boundaries, we have fought for years for our right to self-determination and local economic development in our Indigenous homelands. Secretary Burgum’s decision today suggests our community’s voice is finally being heard in Washington.”

Lampe’s statement was issued by an organization called Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a coalition of North Slope municipal governments, tribes, corporations and other entities.

Environmentalists criticized the Trump administration plans and said they will work to oppose them.

“If we let the Trump administration destroy Alaska’s irreplaceable wild places for corporate profits and polluting fossil fuels that no one needs, the damage will be severe and long-lasting,” Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

“Trump wants to dig, burn and dump his way across Alaska’s finest wildlife refuges and national parks, giving away our public lands to put more money into the pockets of billionaires,” Freeman said. “Alaska’s most precious resources are its vast expanses of wild lands and habitat for wildlife like caribou and polar bears, and we’ll keep fighting hard to protect those beautiful places.”

The national Sierra Club also weighed in.

“The Sierra Club and its millions of members and supporters across the country stand with the Gwich’in and Alaska Natives in opposing these actions. We will do everything in our power to stop the giveaway and preserve our wild and special places for the next generation,” Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

The Gwich’in, Indigenous tribal members from northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, have been among the most ardent opponents of oil development in the refuge.

Economic report questions leasing benefits

Meanwhile, a new report from a nonpartisan organization describes development supporters’ estimates of fiscal benefits from Arctic refuge leasing as vastly exaggerated.

Rather than generating more than $1 billion for the federal treasury, as predicted by development supporters, sales of oil leases in the refuge would generate only $3 million to $30 million, said the report issued Thursday by the nonprofit group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

That means revenues from oil leasing in the wildlife refuge would amount to less than 0.001% of an offset to the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that the Trump administration and Congress have proposed, the report said.

“Continuing to promote Arctic drilling under the illusion of future revenue is a waste of taxpayer time and resources,” concludes the Taxpayers for Common Sense report.

The estimate is based on past data from 20 years of oil leasing on Alaska’s North Slope.

The $3 million estimate assumes that 10% of the refuge’s coastal plan is leased. Even if all 1.56 million acres of the coastal plan were leased, the estimated return to the federal government would be no more than $30 million – and there has never been a lease sale on the North Slope in which all bids were received on all offered tracts, the report notes.

In 2017, the year the tax bill was passed and signed into law, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the two lease sales it mandated would generate a total of $2.2 billion in revenues over 10 years, to be split evenly between the federal and state governments.

Rather than attract a bidding rush, the two past ANWR lease sales drew no bids from any major oil companies. Bidding in the first sale, in 2021, was paltry and came mostly from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned development agency. The lease sale four years later drew no bids.

That experience was part of the information considered in the new analysis released by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“Including new ANWR lease sales as a revenue raiser in budget reconciliation underscores a fundamental disconnect between lofty promises and fiscal reality. The ANWR leasing program was sold as a financial boon for taxpayers, but the numbers tell a different story. Based on past lease sales, industry trends, and financial constraints, the claim that drilling in ANWR will deliver substantial revenue is misleading at best,” the report said.

• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. She covers environmental issues, energy, climate change, natural resources, economic and business news, health, science and Arctic concerns. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.