The Department of the Interior (DOI) has taken the next step toward opening 1.56 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing by issuing a call for nominations and comments on which tracts should be offered in the first of four required lease sales. This step in the federal leasing process signals that the first sale under the new law could occur in the coming months.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), established in 1960 under President Dwight Eisenhower, sits in the far reaches of northeastern Alaska. The FY2025 reconciliation bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), redirected DOI's Coastal Plain oil and gas program by requiring four lease sales in ANWR over the next ten years, each offering no fewer than 400,000 acres.
But taxpayers should not hold their breath for meaningful returns. We have seen this movie before.
For decades, policymakers have debated whether to allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge's 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain—also known as the 1002 area—which Congress kept off-limits without explicit congressional authorization. In 2017, Congress authorized oil and gas leasing in the Coastal Plain for the first time and required two lease sales within seven years, each offering at least 400,000 acres. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congress's nonpartisan scorekeeper, estimated at the time that the sales could generate nearly $1 billion in federal revenue. Those projections turned out to be wildly off the mark.
The first lease sale, held in January 2021 under the original program, brought in just $16.5 million—less than 1% of the CBO estimates. Most leases were purchased by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a public corporation of the State of Alaska. Only two private companies, Knik Arm Services LLC and Regenerate Alaska, participated, and both ultimately relinquished their leases. The second lease sale, held in January 2025, attracted no bidders and generated no revenue at all. The promise that Arctic Refuge leasing would be a meaningful offset for federal spending never came to fruition.
Under OBBBA and the 2025 Record of Decision for the Coastal Plain program, BLM must hold four lease sales over the next ten years and immediately re-offer the tracts that received valid bids in the January 6, 2021 auction—effectively re-instating roughly 366,000 acres previously leased to AIDEA and rescinded in 2024.
Federal lease sales in the Arctic Refuge have not been, and are unlikely ever to be, a meaningful source of revenue for federal taxpayers. Using 20-year average bid levels for state and federal leases on Alaska's North Slope, TCS projects that—even under ideal conditions—future ANWR lease sales are likely to generate between just $3 and $30 million in federal revenue, a tiny fraction of what was once promised.
Moreover, leasing in this remote and sensitive landscape carries substantial fiscal and environmental risks, from higher administrative costs for managing the program to potential cleanup and restoration liabilities if projects stall or fail. Those risks ultimately affect outdoor recreationists, hunters, anglers, and the general public.
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