Companies decline to drill in Alaska wildlife refuge

No oil or gas company sought to drill in a contentious wildlife refuge in Alaska, the Interior Department announced Wednesday.

As required by a 2017 law, the Biden administration offered the private sector the chance to drill on tracts in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

However, it said Wednesday that no company submitted a bid to do so. The deadline to submit bids to drill was Monday. 

“The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 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,” Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the Interior Department, said in a written statement. 

On the campaign trail, President-elect Trump said he wanted drilling in the wildlife refuge, saying in August that he would “get it going very quickly.”

But if companies are unwilling to drill there, that would complicate his efforts. 

Whether to allow drilling in the refuge has been a source of partisan conflict for many years.

Republicans, who generally support drilling there, have argued it’s an opportunity to access more oil and that doing so could open up economic activities, including for indigenous groups such as the Iñupiat. 

Democrats, who have generally opposed it, have pointed to unique wildlife that can be found there including grizzly bears, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou and more than 200 species of birds. In addition, the area contains land considered sacred by the Gwich’in people.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act required the Interior Department offer up at least two chances to drill at the refuge.

A prior auction for drilling rights, held under the Trump administration, received a small number of bids, most of which came from the state of Alaska’s Industrial Development and Export Authority.

The Biden administration later suspended leases for drilling issued as a result of that 2021 auction and later canceled them, calling the prior lease sale “seriously flawed and based on a number of fundamental legal deficiencies.”

— Updated at 1:17 p.m.