Originally published 2021-06-06.
In June 2021 the Biden administration froze the oil and gas leases that had been sold in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during the final days of the Trump administration. It was a suspension, not a ban: the leases were paused while the Interior Department reviewed how they had been issued. Two years later, in September 2023, the remaining leases were cancelled outright. The story did not end there, because the law that forced the sale in the first place is still on the books, and the refuge's coastal plain has stayed a political tug-of-war ever since.
What the June 2021 decision actually did
On his first day in office, 20 January 2021, President Biden ordered a temporary halt to oil and gas activity in the refuge. On 1 June 2021 his Interior Department went a step further and suspended all of the leases issued by the previous administration, pending a fresh environmental review. Officials said the original programme had legal defects, including a flawed analysis of its environmental effects.
A suspension means the leaseholders kept their contracts but could do nothing with them. No surveys, no exploration, no drilling. That is why headlines claiming Biden had "barred all drilling" overstated the case. He had put the existing leases on ice and opened a review that could end in either outcome.
How the leases came to exist
The refuge covers about 19.3 million acres of northeastern Alaska, making it the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States. Most of it is permanently protected wilderness. The exception is a strip of coastal plain known as the "1002 Area", about 1.5 million acres set aside in 1980 for possible future oil development, but only if Congress specifically authorised it.
For four decades Congress did not. That changed in December 2017, when a provision written by Alaska's Senator Lisa Murkowski was added to the Republican tax bill. It required the Interior Department to hold at least two lease sales on the coastal plain.
The first sale took place on 6 January 2021, two weeks before the change of government. It was a disappointment for drilling supporters. Of 22 tracts on offer, only 11 drew bids, and the total raised was about $14.4 million, a tiny fraction of the $1.8 billion the Congressional Budget Office had projected in 2019. No major oil company bid at all. Nine tracts went to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state-owned corporation, and one each to two small companies.
Why the coastal plain matters so much
The coastal plain is the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd, which was estimated at roughly 169,000 animals in 2010. The herd makes an annual journey of around 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles), often described as the longest migration of any land mammal. Biologists have warned that industrial activity could push pregnant cows into the foothills, where newborn calves face more predators.
The refuge is also home to polar bears, grizzly and black bears, wolves, muskoxen, Arctic foxes, wolverines and Dall sheep, along with hundreds of species of migratory birds. Elk are sometimes named in coverage of the refuge, but they do not live there; the large deer of the region are moose and caribou.
For the Gwich'in people, whose villages sit along the caribou's route in Alaska and Canada, the issue is not abstract. They call the coastal plain Iizhik Gwats'an Gwandaii Goodlit, "the sacred place where life begins", and the herd is at the centre of their food, culture and spiritual life. The Gwich'in Steering Committee welcomed the suspension, saying the Gwich'in Nation was "grateful and heartened" that the administration had acted on its commitment to protect sacred lands.
A largely symbolic fight over oil
Industry analysts were blunt about the economics. The energy analyst Pavel Molchanov argued that both the hurried January sale and the June suspension were mostly symbolic, because oil companies had shown little interest in drilling there. The near-empty auction supports that view.
There are good business reasons for the caution. Arctic drilling is expensive, the infrastructure would have to be built from scratch, and the legal risk was obvious from the start. By 2020 several large American banks had also said they would not finance new oil projects in the Arctic, and companies faced growing pressure from investors over climate risk. Supporters of drilling, including Alaska's governor and congressional delegation, argued the opposite: that the refuge could hold billions of barrels and that development would bring jobs and state revenue.
The Willow contradiction
Environmental groups praised the refuge decision but criticised the administration for its stance on a different project: ConocoPhillips' Willow development in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, about 30 miles from the Arctic Ocean and near the Iñupiat village of Nuiqsut. Willow had been approved in 2020, and in 2021 the new administration did not move to stop it.
Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, then a Nuiqsut city council member and later the village's mayor, accused the president of saying one thing and doing another. "It's very disappointing for them to speak in one way and act in another," she said. ConocoPhillips, Alaska's largest crude producer, welcomed the federal review as a significant milestone.
After a federal court challenge, the project was redesigned. In March 2023 the administration approved a scaled-down Willow with three drill pads instead of five, and a federal judge upheld that approval in November 2023. The Bureau of Land Management estimated about 287 million tons of carbon emissions over the project's life, which is why many climate groups saw Willow as the bigger story all along.
Cancellation in 2023 and the fight since
On 6 September 2023 the Interior Department cancelled the seven remaining leases from the January 2021 sale, all held by AIDEA, saying the sale had been legally flawed. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said no one would have the right to drill in one of the most sensitive landscapes on earth. The Gwich'in Steering Committee thanked the administration but warned that protection was only temporary and urged Congress to repeal the leasing programme altogether.
Alaska's state government and AIDEA condemned the cancellation and promised to go to court. Because the 2017 law still required a second sale, one was held over December 2024 and January 2025. Again, no oil companies bid.
On 20 January 2025 the incoming Trump administration moved by executive action to reopen the refuge to oil and gas exploration, and Alaska sued over the restrictions imposed under Biden. The pattern of the past decade is clear: each administration can pause or restart the process, but only Congress can permanently settle the coastal plain's future, and so far it has not.
Key takeaways
- The June 2021 action suspended existing leases; it was not a permanent drilling ban.
- The leases existed because a 2017 tax law required lease sales, and the first sale raised only about $14.4 million with no big oil company bids.
- The remaining seven leases were cancelled in September 2023, but the leasing mandate still stands and policy shifted again in 2025.
- For the Gwich'in, the core issue is the Porcupine caribou herd's calving ground, not oil prices.
Sources: Wikipedia: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Wikipedia: Willow project; Alaska's News Source / AP, 6 September 2023: Interior cancels remaining leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; original report via I Heart Intelligence.
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