No Oil Majors Bother To Show For ANWR Lease Auction; 2 Buyers Picked Up 10.4% Of 689,000 Acres Offered

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, along with Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin, flew to Utqiagvik in the North Slope tundra on the Arctic Ocean last June on a mission to “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.” On Friday, just over one year later, that pledge was put to the test in the Trump administration’s auction of oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a pristine expanse the size of South Carolina that is home to caribou, polar bears and millions of migrating birds.

The auction drew limited interest, with no major companies bidding and only two participants, who agreed to pay $3.7 million for five tracts. The leases total 72,000 acres, out of the 689,000 acres on offer within the refuge’s 19.3 million-acre expanse.

The Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska state director, Kevin Pendergast, whose agency conducted the auction, said at an event announcing the results, “The interest was solid.” “We look forward to learning more about the subsurface of the area as leaseholders pursue exploration,” he said.

But the Gwich’in Steering Committee, an Alaska Native group whose members are long connected to the Porcupine caribou herd that migrate across the refuge, said in a statement that the auction had “failed.”“Yet again, no major oil and gas companies showed up to bid, because they know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a losing proposition,” said Kristen Moreland, the group’s executive director. “We will continue to fight the Trump administration’s leasing program, and work with our friends and allies to protect this sacred and irreplaceable landscape from development of any kind.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/06/05/trump-holds-oil-lease-auction-alaska-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/

https://wapo.st/4vR3IhZ