Trump Administration Auction is a Bust, Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain for Oil Drilling Receives Few Bids
The Coastal Plain provides calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd and denning habitat for polar bears, and no commercial oil drilling has ever taken place in the Refuge.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Bureau of Land Management announced today the results for an oil and gas lease sale in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, offering for bids 58 tracts across nearly 700,000 acres. It is the first of four sales the agency must hold in the Coastal Plain by 2035 under last year’s budget reconciliation law.
Major oil companies avoided the auction, with only two bids coming in from small companies coming in nearly $450 million short of Congress' unrealistic revenue projections.
Following is a statement from Bobby McEnaney, director of Land Conservation at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is reckless, and the market keeps confirming it. This is the third lease sale in a row to be a bust, with major oil companies sitting it out. The government spent public money to hold an auction no major company showed up for, and that tells you everything you need to know about the economics here. It is a remote, fragile landscape that is expensive to drill and risky to bet on, and no amount of pressure from Washington changes that. We should not be putting this delicate habitat on the line for an oil patch that might not exist.”
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).