The Trump administration reopens territory in Alaska to drilling
The Department of Interior recently approved a plan that would reopen more than 80 percent of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to oil and gas leasing.
The plan for the reserve has ping-ponged between presidential administrations over the last decade. The recent move restores a plan issued in 2020 under the first Trump administration that opened much of the 23-million-acre petroleum reserve to drilling.
As part of the process, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published a new environmental assessment and held a 14-day comment period to evaluate any new circumstances and information that had emerged since 2020. In its analysis, the department estimated oil production in the NPR-A under its new plan could range from 120,000 to 500,000 barrels a day.
The Biden administration had replaced the prior Trump administration’s plan with one first issued in 2013 that limited leasing to around 52 percent of the reserve. But President Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution this past December invalidating the Biden administration plan. Trump has moved aggressively to reopen drilling in the NPR-A. The Interior Department rescinded a Biden-era rule last month that imposed “maximum protection” on millions of acres for wildlife protection and ended an effort to expand protected “special areas” within the reserve in July of 2025.
BLM is planning to hold a lease sale in the NPR-A this winter 2026, the first such auction since 2019. It also recently approved a new round of exploratory drilling and a seismic survey within the NPR-A by ConocoPhillips, which is developing its massive Willow project in the reserve.
