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An agreement that protected about a million acres of sensitive Arctic territory is back in effect, meaning that this week’s oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska will likely be smaller than the Trump administration had planned.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason’s ruling, issued Monday, ensures that a Native coalition’s land agreement, known as the Nuiqsut Trilateral right of way, “shall remain in full force and effect,” at least temporarily.

The agreement is a conservation pact that gave Nuiqsut residents some control over oil development in about a million acres in the Teshekpuk Lake area. The Trump administration’s Department of the Interior canceled that right-of-way agreement in December, prompting a January lawsuit from the Nuiqsut parties.

As a result of Gleason’s ruling, the Trump administration’s National Petroleum Reserve lease sale likely cannot include acreage within the Nuiqsut right of way. That sale was originally planned to span 5.5 million acres, including most of the right-of-way territory. Bids are to be opened by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday.

Exactly how the BLM will change the lease sale or handle submitted bids was yet to be determined Monday afternoon. The Department of the Interior has not yet commented.

Gleason’s ruling granted an injunction sought by plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits that challenged the way the BLM is managing the National Petroleum Reserve and the upcoming lease sale conducted under that Trump administration management system.

The lawsuit over the right-of-way agreement was filed by Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc., comprising Nuiqsut’s city and tribal governments and Kuukpik Corp., the village’s for-profit Native corporation.

An Inupiat village of about 500, Nuiqsut is the community located closest to existing and planned development in the petroleum reserve.

The second lawsuit was filed by Grandmothers Growing Goodness and The Wilderness Society, and it challenged the entire Trump administration management plan for the petroleum reserve and the lease sale that was structured under that system. The Trump administration plan opened 82% of the reserve to oil leasing.

Plaintiffs in both the cases were in Gleason’s courtroom on Thursday arguing in separate hearings for injunctions that would bar previously protected acreage from being included in this week’s lease sale. The Nuiqsut plaintiffs argued specifically about the acreage within the right of way, while the Grandmothers Giving Goodness-Wilderness Society plaintiffs argued for blocking right-of-way acreage plus other acreage in the general area that had previously been off-limits to development.

In her Nuiqsut ruling, Gleason said the right-of-way agreement conveyed a property right that appears to have been violated by the Trump administration’s cancellation of the right-of-way agreement, so that is enough irreparable harm to justify a preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs do not need to demonstrate any irreparable harm from the sale of oil leases, she said.

That makes this case different from past cases in which environmental and Native plaintiffs claimed irreparable harm from leases yet to be sold and developed, Gleason said in her ruling.

“Here, by contrast, the injury is the loss of Plaintiff’s real property rights— a harm that Plaintiff has already experienced and continues to experience,” she said in her ruling.

Additionally, the Nuiqsut plaintiffs have presented compelling arguments that the Trump administration acted illegally when it abruptly canceled the right-of-way agreement, Gleason said. The Nuiqsuit plaintiffs raised “serious questions” about public notice, agency responsibilities and other issues, the judge said, suggesting that they have a chance of winning their full case on legal merits.

Gleason had not ruled as of Monday afternoon on the injunction sought in the second lawsuit.

As planned by the Trump administration, this week’s lease sale offered territory in and near Teshekpuk Lake that has never before been put up for auction, as well as some territory that had been protected since 2012. In all, the geographic size of this week’s lease sale is bigger than most of the National Petroleum Reserve sales held since 1999.

A government attorney referenced last year’s sweeping tax and budget bill passed by Congress in their defense of the Department of the Interior’s decision to cancel the right-of-way agreement and put up new territory for oil and gas leasing.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” overturned protections in the petroleum reserve and mandated a series of lease sales to be held under the Trump management plan, Justice Department attorney Paul Turcke told Gleason during the Nuiqsut hearing on Thursday.

The Nuiqsut right-of-way agreement was announced by the Biden administration in 2024. Originally conceived by Kuukpik, it was negotiated in exchange for support from Nuiqsut entities and leaders for the Willow project. The Biden administration approved Willow in 2023, although with protective stipulations that included provisions from which the Nuiqsut right-of-way agreement stemmed.

Teshekpuk Lake, the biggest lake on the North Slope, and the surrounding lands support a caribou herd that bears the lake’s name, as well as hundreds of thousands of birds that migrate from as far away as Antarctica, along with other Arctic wildlife.

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