Today the federal government opened 689,000 acres of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Nine bids came in. Total money raised: $3.74 million.
For reference — a single Bakken horizontal well costs more than that to drill.
What Actually Happened
- 58 tracts offered across 689,000 acres of the Coastal Plain
- Only 5 tracts received any bids at all
- Only 2 bidders showed up — Hex Energy and AIDEA, an Alaska state-run bank
- The 2025 sale got zero bids. The 2021 sale pulled $14.4 million — and most of those leases were eventually canceled
- CBO projected $452 million in revenue over 10 years from this program. At today's pace they'll need about 120 more sales to get there
- Zero major oil companies bid. Not one.
The Real Story
The government has been fighting in court for years to open ANWR. Environmentalists have been fighting in court for years to block it. Industry looked at both of them — and said no thanks.
At $90 oil with Hormuz still half-closed and the world screaming for barrels, the Arctic Refuge still can't get a Chevron or an Exxon to write a check. That tells you something about the actual economics up there.
No roads. No infrastructure. No pipeline access. Permafrost engineering at scale. Litigation guaranteed on every lease. Administration changes every four years — ANWR has already been opened, canceled, reopened, and canceled again. No CFO is signing off on a 20-year Arctic megaproject on federal land with that track record.
The geology might be there. The policy stability isn't.
Who Did Show Up
AIDEA — the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority — is a state-run public corporation that has stepped in to bid on ANWR leases specifically because private industry won't. They currently hold six tracts from the 2021 sale. None have seen any development.
Hex Energy is a smaller independent. Their position is worth watching — if Pantheon Resources' nearby flow test on the North Slope comes in clean, sentiment on the broader area could shift. Infrastructure proximity is the whole game up there.
Bottom Line
This isn't a story about politics. Both sides have had shots at this. Biden killed the leases, Trump reopened them. Industry still didn't show up either time.
The hands who'd work those fields don't exist yet — because the fields don't exist yet — and after three sales, it's not clear they ever will.
Worth drilling or just a political football? Drop your take below.