A Congressional Research Service report summarizes the status of the oil and gas program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a 19-million-acre area in northeast Alaska administered chiefly by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Refuge’s 1.57-million-acre Coastal Plain is regarded as an onshore oil prospect, with a US Geological Survey mean estimate of 7.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil — comparable to total 2024 US petroleum consumption of about 7.4 billion barrels. The area is also caribou and polar-bear habitat (the latter protected under the Endangered Species Act) and supports Alaska Native subsistence use. The 2017 tax law (P.L. 115-97) established a competitive leasing program for the Coastal Plain, reversing a 1980 ANILCA prohibition on oil and gas activity absent congressional authorization. At the first lease sale, held January 6, 2021, the Bureau of Land Management offered 22 tracts across 1.1 million acres, drawing $14.4 million in high bids; nine leases covering 437,804 acres were issued, seven to the state-established Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and two to private companies that later relinquished them.
(Congressional Research Service, 2026)
Source: Congressional Research Service · original
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