Burgum Orders Nearly 20 Million Acres in Alaska Opened for Oil, Gas Development

Interior chief lifts National Petroleum Reserve and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge restrictions as debt-busters. Some doubt the change will help as intended.

The Kaktovik Lagoon and the Brooks Range mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Kaktovik, Alaska, on Oct. 15, 2024. Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has directed the Bureau of Land Management to “pursue steps to expand opportunities for exploration and development” of oil, gas, and mineral resources across nearly 20 million previously off-limits acres within Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR) and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The move was not unexpected after President Donald Trump issued a Jan. 20 ‘Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential’ executive actions package mandating federal agencies “expedite permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects,” prioritize “development of Alaska’s liquified natural gas (LNG) potential,” and expand fossil fuel development in the 23-million-acre NPR and 19.6-million acre ANWR.

Burgum followed through with a Feb. 3 order requiring the Bureau of Land Management to “exercise all lawful authority” in developing a plan to implement the president’s policy.

“It’s time for the U.S. to embrace Alaska’s abundant and largely untapped resources as a pathway to prosperity for the nation, including Alaskans,” Burgum said in a March 20 press release announcing the directive.

The sweeping actions by Trump and Burgum, who also chairs the National Energy Dominance Council, rescind “all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions … promulgated, issued, or adopted between Jan. 20, 2021, and Jan. 20, 2025,” essentially erasing dozens of actions related to Alaska by President Joe Biden and his administration.

During Trump’s first term, Congress directed the Department of Interior (DOI) to open a 1.56-million acre coastal plain area within ANWR’s Section 1002 to oil and gas drilling for the first time when it adopted the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the area could hold up to 11.8 billion barrels of oil.

However, the Biden administration auctioned only 400,000 acres in January 2025, drawing no bidders because “new severe restrictions” imposed in November 2024 made “any development economically and practically impossible,” Alaska argued in a Jan. 5 lawsuit that alleged DOI and the Bureau of Land Management were in violation of the TCJA.

Under the executive actions and Burgum’s directive, the bureau must now make the entire 1.56-million-acre ANWR coastal plain and 82 percent of NPR available for oil and gas leasing. More than 13 million of NPR’s 23 million acres had been off-limits to development for decades since at least 1980.

“For far too long, the federal government has created too many barriers to capitalizing on the state’s energy potential,” Burgum said.

Trump campaigned on a vow to “unleash American energy” to ignite economic development and pay down the national debt, something Burgum expounded upon during a March 12 discussion before global energy leaders at CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston.

“Our national assets far exceed the $36.5 trillion in debt,” he said, noting assets administered by DOI—500 million acres of public land, 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights, 2.5 billion offshore acres—are long-mismanaged resources the Trump administration sees as debt-busting revenue generators.

Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) said in a March 20 statement that Oil and gas leases and the revenues they generate may not be the answer the president and his interior secretary are touting them to be.

The January 2021 ANWR lease sale authorized by the TCJA “yielded only $16.5 million in revenue, largely funded by the state-backed Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority,” the nonprofit said, citing its recently posted analysis of ANWR lease sales as a case-in-point.

Subsequent withdrawals and cancellations of leases “ultimately led to taxpayers receiving no new revenue from the sale” the Washington-based watchdog said.

The second lease sale, the January 2025 auction that spanned 400,000 acres, attracted no industry bids at all.

“ANWR lease sales were originally projected to generate $1 billion in federal revenue to offset the TCJA tax cuts, which Congress now seeks to make permanent,” the nonprofit said.

“Our examination, grounded in lease sale data spanning the past two decades, provides a rigorous, data-driven estimate of likely federal revenues,” it said, that “directly challenge overly optimistic revenue projections that have been used to justify recent fiscal policies, particularly using ANWR lease sales as revenue-raising offsets for the proposed $4.5 trillion in lost revenue as part of the budget reconciliation package.”

Burgum’s directive also calls for the land management bureau to “convey” federal lands framing Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River to the state, essentially tracing the proposed route of the 211-mile Ambler Road project proposed by the Alaska Industrial and Development Export Authority, and along the 807-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor.

The pipeline project, sponsored by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, seeks to funnel about 3.3 billion cubic feet of gas a day (Bcf/d) from Prudhoe Bay above the North Slope to Nikiski on the Kenai Peninsula, about 80 miles south of Anchorage. It would be the only LNG export terminal on the west coast of the United States.

The proposed pipeline/terminal project was initially submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2017 and received authorization to proceed in May 2020 under the Trump administration. It was reauthorized under the Biden administration in 2022.

Despite the re-authorization, nearly 80 Biden executive orders related to Alaska energy development had locked the LNG project in a regulatory limbo.

“It’s a very different world, right?” Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said during a March 14 CERAWeek address, noting Trump’s Alaska executive actions don’t just untangle oil, gas, and the state’s LNG project from regulatory straitjackets, but clear away federal rules restricting access to critical minerals, timber, and other resources in the massive state.

“It’s an amazing executive order,” he said. “I mean, we'll have that framed on our walls for decades” in the Alaska governor’s office in Juneau.

The governor has been on a sales trip to Japan, South Korea, and Thailand securing customers for when the state’s LNG pipeline/liquefaction plant begins producing in less than three years.

Dunleavy called Burgum’s directive “more great news for Alaska,” in a March 20 statement.

“The news today will provide more investment opportunities, more jobs, and a better future for Alaskans,” he said. “We look forward to our continued work with President Trump and his administration to move Alaska and our country forward.”