VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 3 | SUMMER 2025
IS THERE OIL IN ANWR? ALASKA WILL SOON KNOW
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Future development will continue to be at the forefront of politics BY TIM BRADNER ALASKANS HAVE WONDERED FOR DECADES WHETHER THERE IS REALLY OIL IN THE COASTAL PLAIN OF THE ALASKA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REF- UGE, COMMONLY CALLED ANWR. For decades, ANWR has been a politi- cal football. As the big North Slope oil dis- coveries were developed, geologists started looking for where the next big finds could be made. East of Prudhoe Bay the geology looked prospective. Rock outcrops the ANWR hinted at reservoir-type rocks below. There were oil seeps, indicating an active petro- leum-generating system. Surface rocks were so oil-saturated that one geologic field party set an oil-stained boulder alight to help cook dinner. Companies were interested. The feder- ally owned lands weren’t open but adjacent Alaska Native lands were available. BP and Chevron made a deal with Arctic Slope Regional Corp. to drill a test well south- east of Kaktovik, the Inupiat community at ANWR’s northern border. Things looked promising, but politics intervened. Conservation groups had been interested for years in putting a large part of northern Alaska into protected status and in 1960 they persuaded President Dwight Ei- senhower, as he was leaving office, to admin- istratively create the Arctic National Wildlife Range as protected federal land unit. Designation of ANWR as a formal wild- life refuge, which requires congressional approval, came in 1980 with passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands and Con- servation Act, or ANILCA, which created a number of new national parks and refuges including ANWR. The new refuge totaled 19.2 million acres.
development finance agency. With support from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, AIDEA bid on and won leases in the lease sale. This was an unusual, and gutsy strategy done mainly as a hedge against no leases being bid on and the federal government retaining con- trol, not a good outcome with President Joe Biden, who strongly opposed ANWR ex- ploration, coming into office. As it turned out, AIDEA’s gamble paid off. The two small companies bidding win- ning leases gave those back to the govern- ment. AIDEA hung in there and applied for permits to do seismic exploration, which Deb Haaland, Biden’s Interior Secretary, rejected. Haaland then went on to cancel AIDEA’s leases. The state authority filed a lawsuit, citing dubious legal grounds for the cancellation. AIDEA won its suit in early 2025 when U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason inval- idated Haaland’s cancellation of the leases. Meanwhile, the Interior Department held the second leases sale required under the jobs and tax act but Haaland offered only minimal acreage and loaded the offering with restrictions so that there were no bids. President Trump has restored AIDEA’s leases and the authority is now busy plan- ning exploration. AIDEA has said it doesn’t intend to hang on to the leases but will do preliminary exploration and bring in private companies to be partners in development. Basically, this is a “farm-out” arrangement typical in private sector, where companies holding leases bring in others as developers. Will commercial oil deposits be found? Only drilling will tell. Geologists have more confidence in the western part of the coast- al plain that is near state of Alaska lands where oil and gas discoveries have been made. Another advantage is the infrastruc- ture built 60 miles east from Prudhoe Bay to the Point Thomson gas and condensate field, which is now producing. The Point Thomson pipeline has spare capacity, which will help in the development of any oil found in ANWR.
At the time, there was a big push by con- servation groups to also designate the new refuge as wilderness, the most restrictive form of federal protection. Eight million acres of ANWR did get a wilderness desig- nation but Alaska’s congressional delegation, then led by Sen. Ted Stevens, succeeded in carving off an enclave in the refuge’s north- ern coastal plain, keeping it out of wilder- ness because of its oil and gas potential. The 1980 law also required the Interior Department to assess petroleum prospects in the ANWR’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, which came to be called the “1002 area” after the section of ANILCA that set it aside for further study of its potential. The department dragged its feet on this through successive presidents but eventually was persuaded to let industry do preliminary exploration with a “group shoot” paid for by companies sharing the data. The govern- ment also received the data and helped it fulfill the requirement under ANILCA. The group shoot done with “2D” seis- mic, the best available at the time, and it indicated the presence of several under- ground geologic structures that could be big oilfields if they held oil. Only drilling could show that, however, and conservation groups fought hard in Congress against the required federal authorization for drilling. For years, the issue seesawed in Con- gress. At one point Congress approved ANWR exploration only to have President Bill Clinton veto it. It was only when Trump was elected in 2016 that Alaska’s congres- sional delegation, in an initiative led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, secured permission for ANWR lease sales and drilling in the tax and jobs act passed in 2019. The act actual- ly required Interior to hold the sales, so the agency had no discretion. Under President Trump, the first lease sale was held but continued controversy over drilling in a wildlife refuge led to just a few bids from two small companies and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, the state of Alaska’s
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ALASKA RESOURCE REVIEW SUMMER 2025
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