A second oil and gas lease sale for Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge draws no bids

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The U.S. Interior Department says that no bids were submitted for this week’s oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday said no bids were submitted for this week's oil and gas lease sale in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a sale the state has challenged as too restrictive and at odds with a 2017 law aimed at opening the refuge's sweeping coastal plan to exploration and development.

Monday was the deadline for companies to submit bids, the agency said.

Interior Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said the lack of interest by oil companies in pursuing leases in the refuge's coastal plain “reflects what we and they have known all along – there are some places too special and sacred to put at risk with oil and gas drilling.”

“The oil and gas industry is sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere; we’d suggest that’s a prudent place to start, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the world,” she said in a statement.

But this is unlikely to be the last word. The state this week sued the Interior Department and federal officials over the sale, alleging among other things that the terms were too restrictive. The state also is seeking to have the environmental review underpinning the sale thrown out. Litigation around the first lease sale — held in the waning days of the Trump administration in early 2021 — also is still pending.

A 2017 law that President-elect Donald Trump has often highlighted called for offering two lease sales in the refuge’s coastal plain by late 2024. Major oil companies sat out the first sale, which saw a state corporation as the main