US petroleum reserve lease sale in Alaska draws modest 7 bids

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — President Donald Trump’s efforts to make the United States “energy dominant” with help from Alaska got off to modest results this week.

The Interior Department made its largestever lease offering within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska: 900 tracts covering 16,100 square miles, roughly the size of New Hampshire and Massachusetts combined.

But oil companies submitted bids Wednesday on just seven tracts covering 125 square miles.

The bids totaled $1.16 million, to be split between the federal government and the state of Alaska. All seven bids were submitted jointly by subsidiaries of ConocoPhillips and Anadarko.

Environmental groups oppose expanded drilling in the reserve, located west of Prudhoe Bay, or any drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska’s northeast corner.

Trump in June, announcing a new American energy policy, said he was focusing not just on energy independence but also “energy dominance.”

The petroleum reserve bids Wednesday pulled in $14.99 per acre, an amount that shows “fuzzy math” by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans who hope to collect $1 billion from Arctic refuge lease sales to help pay for Trump’s proposed tax cut, said Kristen Miller, conservation director of the Alaska Wilderness League.

“At that price, leasing the entirety of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain’s 1.5 million acres would raise slightly more than $11 million in revenue for the federal government, a far cry from the billion dollar lie that Trump and Republicans are feeding the American public,” she said in a statement.

Kara Moriarty, director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said there likely were a variety of factors for just seven bids. A state lease sale drew 143 bids Wednesday. Alaska’s tax policies, changed seven times in 12 years, may have discouraged bidding.