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ANWR lease sale in Jan
BLM offers minimum acreage of coastal plain region for potential development
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
The Bureau of Land Management has announced an oil and gas lease sale on Jan. 9 for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The agency is offering for potential leasing the minimum acreage of 400,000 acres that was mandated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The federal statute requires the holding of at least two lease sales within seven years of the enactment of the statute. The acreage on offer is on the western side of the coastal plain.
(See map in the online issue PDF)
By comparison, the total area of the coastal plain that could potentially be offered for oil and gas leasing amounts to 1.57 million acres.
The lease sale announcement follows the issuance of a record of decision for a recently published supplemental environmental impact statement for the lease sale. BLM says that the area offered for leasing will avoid important polar bear denning areas and Porcupine Caribou Herd calving areas. The agency also says that the selected lease sale option has the minimum possible land surface occupancy associated with potential leasing. And seismic surveying will be limited to the areas available for leasing.
First lease sale in 2021 The first lease sale mandated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was conducted in January 2021, with the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, Knik Arm Services and Regenerate Alaska obtaining leases in the sale. However, shortly after the lease sale had been held the incoming Biden administration determined that the environmental impact statement for the sale had been deficient and required a rework. That resulted in the development of the SEIS that was recently completed.
With lease related activities having to be suspended as a consequence of the SEIS development, Knik Arm Services and Regenerate Alaska surrendered their leases. And in September 2023 BLM cancelled AIDEA's leases. AIDEA subsequently took the Department of the Interior to court in the federal District Court in Alaska, arguing that the lease cancellations had been illegal.
Unresolved legal case As previously reported by Petroleum News, the fact that that this court case has yet to be resolved introduces a potential complication for the upcoming lease sale -- AIDEA has told the court that 265,000 acres of land within the cancelled leases may overlap with the 400,000 acres of land that are to be offered for leasing in the upcoming lease sale. Should the court find in favor of AIDEA after the upcoming sale, there is the potential for a major legal tangle, if another entity successfully bids on some of that AIDEA acreage. A consequence could be two different entities then holding leasing rights to the same land. Meantime, AIDEA requested the court to issue an injunction, prohibiting BLM from leasing land that had been leased to AIDEA in 2021.
AIDEA met with officials from the Department of the Interior on Dec. 5 to seek a means of resolving the legal problem. And on Dec. 9 Interior told the court that it had come to an agreement with AIDEA that the entire 400,000 acres would remain within the upcoming lease sale but, should an entity successfully bid on acreage that had previously been leased to AIDEA, BLM would not accept the bid or lease that acreage to the successful bidder until either the court issues a decision in the court case or 84 days have passed since lease sale bids had been opened. And should the court not issue its decision within 45 days of the bids being opened, AIDEA can refile its motion for an injunction. Based on this agreement, an immediate injunction is not required.
District Court Judge Sharon Gleason has accepted the proposed solution.
Senators slam lease sale limitations Alaska's U.S. senators have slammed the results of the SEIS and the subsequent limitations to the upcoming lease sale. They argue that the record of decision for the SEIS conflicts with "clear and unambiguous language" in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and, hence, "dramatically restricts leasing and future development" on the Coastal Plain.
"For the past four years, Interior has done everything it can think of to undermine responsible development on the Coastal Plain, ignoring federal law and those who actually live on the North Slope to upend the reasonable program the Trump administration put in place in 2020," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski. "The ROD does not reflect statutory requirements, the preferences of most local residents, or the needs of our nation, but it's a fitting finale for an administration that has routinely allowed Iran, Venezuela, and other adversaries to produce their resources, regardless of the consequences, while attempting to shut everything down in Alaska."
"The Biden-Harris administration's eleventh-hour lease sale in ANWR is yet another charade aimed at subverting the will of Congress in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," said Sen. Dan Sullivan. "The Biden Interior Department is proposing a lease sale that closes three-quarters of the 1002 Area -- including lands that are projected to have substantial resources beneath them -- after having previously cancelled all of the leases lawfully-issued under the first statutorily mandated lease sale. But the most insulting aspect of BLM's announcement is the agency's claim to have 'consulted with Alaska Native Tribes and Corporations' on this record of decision. Having spoken with the leaders of these entities, I can report that nothing is further from the truth."
"Though our communities welcome the potential for a successful lease sale, we are clear eyed about the administration's intent and flawed process that got us here," said Voice of the Arctic Inupiat President Nagruk Harcharek. "This final ROD and notice of a lease sale is a deliberate attempt by the Biden administration's Interior Department to kneecap the potential of development in ANWR. This minimalist ROD goes against the wishes of the North Slope Inupiat, particularly those in Kaktovik -- the only community located within ANWR."
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