Trump administration proposes offshore leasing in almost all Alaska waters

A new five-year offshore oil and gas leasing plan proposes 21 sales in Alaska, from the Gulf of Alaska to the High Arctic, and 13 more off the U.S. West Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Trump administration on Thursday released a plan for offshore oil and gas leasing that would open up almost all Alaska marine waters to development, along with the entire Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Alaska portion of the plan proposes 21 lease sales through 2031, five of them in Cook Inlet, two in the Beaufort Sea, two in the Chukchi Sea and the others in other marine areas. Those include a lease sale in a newly designated “High Arctic” area that lies beyond the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and where U.S. territorial rights are not yet clear.

The only federal Alaska offshore area without a proposed lease sale is the North Aleutian Basin, where oil leasing is under an indefinite ban to protect salmon-rich Bristol Bay.

The new plan, which also proposes six oil lease sales off the U.S. West Coast and seven in the Gulf of Mexico, is similar to an offshore leasing plan proposed by the Trump administration in 2017.

In a statement, the Department of the Interior called the plan “a major step to boosting United States energy independence.”

“Offshore oil and gas production does not happen overnight. It takes years of planning, investment, and hard work before barrels reach the market,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in the statement. “The Biden administration slammed the brakes on offshore oil and gas leasing and crippled the long-term pipeline of America’s offshore production. By moving forward with the development of a robust, forward-thinking leasing plan, we are ensuring that America’s offshore industry stays strong, our workers stay employed, and our nation remains energy dominant for decades to come.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a supporter of President Donald Trump, hailed the plan.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is leading the way to American energy dominance by restoring confidence in the federal government’s offshore leasing policies. Alaska has tremendous offshore oil and gas reserves that can power our economy for decades,” Dunleavy said in a poston the social media site X.

Another pro-drilling and pro-Trump Alaska public official, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, had a more muted response.

Sullivan, in a statement, said Burgum on Thursday “committed to me that DOI will continue to carefully listen to Alaskans throughout this process, particularly Alaska Native communities who live near the proposed leasing areas, including our whaling captains who bring generations of experience and deep knowledge of the Arctic Ocean.”

“It’s important for Alaskans to know that this draft proposal is not a final decision or a directive that any particular offshore lease sale will occur. Before any potential proposal is finalized, there will be multiple opportunities for public comment, environmental review, and additional analysis. As my office reviews the proposal, I will work to ensure that we are weighing in and amplifying Alaskan voices and views,” Sullivan continued.

Others expressed anger about the plan.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, was among a group of mostly California Democrats in Congress who blasted it during a news conference Thursday.

“We are here because President Trump just put out what we believe is an asinine pro-polluter plan to open up our coast to offshore drilling,” Huffman said.

It is “not just a little bit of offshore drilling,” he said, but the entire California coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico where residents have long opposed offshore drilling, and “every inch of Alaska.”  Huffman is the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.

Environmentalists singled out the proposed Arctic lease sales in particular.

“Drilling anywhere in the Arctic Ocean is completely irresponsible. It is remote, ice-filled, stormy, home to irreplaceable wildlife and subsistence traditions. There is no way to clean up oil spills in this environment, and they are inevitable,” Erik Grafe, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said in an emailed statement.

Additionally, Grafe said, leasing in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas is unlawful.

“Those areas have been withdrawn from future leasing by Presidents Obama and Biden, and though President Trump has purported to reverse these withdrawals, he lacks that authority.  Only Congress can open them up again,” he said.

That finding was the result of an environmental lawsuit that Grafe represented. In 2019, Alaska-based U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that Trump was barred from undoing Obama administration protections for Arctic and East Coast waters.

A new lawsuit filed in February by many of the same plaintiffs addresses that issue again. The new lawsuit, also with Grafe as one of the plaintiff attorneys, targets Trump’s Inauguration Day executive actions that aimed to open wide swaths of territory to drilling and other development, including the Arctic Ocean.

Another pending legal question concerns whether the federal government has the right to sell leases in the area designated as the High Arctic. That area, part of the North American extended outer continental shelf, lies beyond the 200-nautical-mile U.S. exclusive economic zone. The Biden administration made a territorial claim to the area, which is larger than California. But the claim has yet to be confirmed. The U.S. is not a party to the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that international treaty is used to adjudicate nations’ territorial claims in the outer continental shelf.

The idea of leasing most of the non-Arctic areas off Alaska’s coastline also got a poor reception on Thursday.

Anticipating the new Trump administration plan, a coalition of Alaska Native tribal governments in June sent a letter to Burgum expressing longstanding opposition to Bering Sea oil leasing.

The letter asked Burgum to drop all plans for selling leasing in areas from the Aleutian Islands to the Bering Strait.

“We, the Central Yup’ik, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, and Inupiaq people, have been here since time immemorial. Because we spend so much time out on the Bering Sea fishing and hunting, the sea is just as important to us as the land. The Tribes that still rely on these waters to hunt and fish remain unified in protecting these waters. Our people have been clear: the planning areas in our region should not be made available for oil and gas leasing,” said the letter, which was from the Association of Village Council Presidents, Nome-based Kawerak, Inc. and the Bering Sea Elders Group.

Kawerak, Inc. referred to that June letter Thursday to express its reaction to the new leasing plan.The tribal organizations have been the forces behind establishment of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area during the Obama administration. The designation barred oil leasing and bottom trawling, addressed some shipping safety concerns and established a system for more tribal control.

The first Trump administration abolished the designation; President Joe Biden, in an Inauguration Day executive action, revived it. Trump, on the first day of his second term, abolished the protections again.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said Friday that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that manages offshore energy activity, will do further evaluation before settling on a final leasing plan.

“The First Proposal is the first of three required steps before the Secretary can finalize the 11th Program. BOEM is including these areas now to meet legal requirements, conduct further analysis, gather public and industry input, and ensure the Secretary can fully evaluate all options before deciding what areas to include in the final program,” Alyse Sharpe, a senior public affairs specialist, said by email.

Huffman, at the Democrats’ news conference, said the public is likely to mobilize nationally against the plan and that his colleagues will work to prevent it from being implemented.

That includes the proposed Arctic and Bering Sea lease sales, which he called “incredibly reckless.”

“We know what the seafood economy means to the state of Alaska. And we know what happened with the Exxon Valdez,’ he said, referring to the 1989 oil spill disaster in Prince William Sound.

“I’m a Californian, but I will fight to protect Alaska’s coast and Alaska’s fisheries as well,” he added.

Eight years ago, when the first Trump administration released a similar plan for oil leasing in almost all areas of federal waters off Alaska, the idea was widely panned in the state.

While political leaders supported leasing in Cook Inlet and the Beaufort and the Chukchi Seas, they objected to the idea of leasing other areas.

Among the groups objecting was the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages commercial seafood harvests in Alaska’s federal waters. The council, citing “the substantial risk to the sustainable management of Alaska’s fisheries,” asked then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to drop all the Bering Sea, Aleutian and Gulf of Alaska lease salesfrom the plan.

Then-Gov. Bill Walker and the all-Republican congressional delegation made similar requests to Zinke, asking him to focus the plan on Cook Inlet and the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, while retaining longstanding buffers to protect whales and other subsistence resources. The Alaska Legislature passed a resolution with a similar request.

The first Trump administration’s expansive leasing plan never went into effect.

Gleason’s 2019 decision froze action on that leasing plan, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior agency that manages offshore oil and gas leasing, continued to work under the Obama administration’s 2017-2022 five-year plan. In 2023, the Biden administration released a five-year leasing plan for 2024 through 2029 that was limited to three Gulf of Mexico lease sales.

There has never been any oil produced from federal waters off Alaska except for a small portion of the Hilcorp-operated Northstar field in the Beaufort Sea, which lies mostly on state leases close to shore. The last federal offshore lease sale held in Alaska, a Cook Inlet sale held at the end of 2022, drew only one bid.

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: [email protected]. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and X.