ANWR lease sale draws $3.74m in winning bids from AIDEA, Hex Energy

The latest federal lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drew $3.7 million in winning bids Friday, reviving one of Alaska's longest-running oil fights — though the modest, two-bidder result fell well short of the industry rush that drilling advocates have long predicted for the Coastal Plain.

The Bureau of Land Management offered 58 tracts across roughly 688,829 acres in the 2026 Coastal Plain oil and gas lease sale. It received nine bids on five tracts covering about 72,049 acres. The only two bidders named at the public opening were the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state financing agency, and Hex Energy LLC. AIDEA won three tracts; Hex won two.

The high bids totaled $3.7 million, out of $6.3 million in total bids submitted. Under federal law, half of the winning-bid revenue goes to Alaska, leaving the state with roughly $1.85 million before any future royalties, rentals or exploration spending.

That is more than the January 2025 sale produced, which drew no bids at all. But the gap between interest and commitment is the story of the Coastal Plain, and it showed again Friday: not one major North Slope producer stepped forward. The bidder list included no ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Chevron, Hilcorp, Santos, Eni or Repsol — the companies with the capital and infrastructure to actually develop the region.

The bidding that did happen was competitive. Hex Energy placed the largest successful bid, $1,705,697 for tract 112, edging AIDEA's $1,500,544 offer on the same parcel. Hex also took tract 82 with $477,537, beating AIDEA's $400,330. AIDEA won tract 93 for $399,490, tract 103 for $512,550, and tract 111 for $646,254 — the lone bid on that parcel. BLM Alaska State Director Kevin Pendergast said the agency had drawn "nine bids on five tracts in areas currently understood to be of the highest potential."

The land at stake, the Coastal Plain, is also known as the 1002 Area — about 1.56 million acres along the northern edge of the Arctic Refuge that development advocates have for generations called one of the country's largest undeveloped onshore oil prospects.

It is also home ground. Kaktovik, an Iñupiat village, is the only community inside the refuge, and many of its few hundred residents have long argued that decisions about the land they live on should reflect their own economic, subsistence and self-determination interests; the village has generally supported opening the Coastal Plain. To the south and east, Gwich'in communities draw a different conclusion from their own ties to the same landscape. Their subsistence and culture are bound to the Porcupine Caribou Herd, which migrates to the Coastal Plain to calve, and Gwich'in leaders warn that drilling could damage the calving grounds and the way of life built around the herd.

The legal ground beneath the sale is nearly as contested as the land itself. Congress opened the Coastal Plain to leasing through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The first sale, in January 2021, drew $14.4 million in high bids, most of it from AIDEA. The Biden administration then paused the program and canceled AIDEA's leases, citing flaws in the environmental review; AIDEA sued, and a federal court vacated the cancellations in March 2025.

A lease sale is also a long way from a drill rig. Winning bidders still face lease issuance, exploration planning, permitting, environmental review and the near-certainty of litigation before any work begins, and any production would hinge on what the geology holds, what infrastructure can be built, and whether the economics work.

"While the history of this area is long on policy, a new era of active leasing and exploration is just beginning to unfold," Pendergast said after the bids were announced.

Whether that proves true is unsettled. What Friday showed is narrower but real: after a sale that drew no takers a year ago, there is still appetite for the Arctic Refuge — for now, cautious, and limited to a state authority and a single private company.