The Alaska headquarters of Prudhoe Bay operator Hilcorp in Midtown Anchorage is seen on Feb. 7, 2024. The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission assessed a fine of $695,900 against the company for activities at a Prudhoe Bay satellite field. Hilcorp has the right to appeal the fine. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska regulators have assessed a $695,900 fine against Hilcorp for violations at two wells in a North Slope oil field that is a satellite of the giant Prudhoe Bay field.
Hilcorp violated regulations for up to two years when it injected enriched gas into the reservoir at the Polaris Oil Pool, which is part of the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission said in a Nov. 24 decision and order.
Hilcorp is a Texas-based private company that now operates the state’s largest oil field. It is the second-biggest fine for the company ever proposed by the AOGCC.
The highest proposed fine was $720,000, which the commission initially assessed against the company in late 2015 for violations that led to an accident earlier that year that nearly killed three workers at the Milne Point oil field.
Ultimately, the AOGCC in 2017 reduced the fine to $200,000, though the commission assessed other fines at about the same time for other violations at Milne Point. Those fines ranged from $20,000 to $80,000.
In its new enforcement action, the AOGCC said the fine for the Polaris field violations is justified by the company’s pattern of violations.
“Hilcorp’s repeated failure to comply with fundamental injection authorization raises the potential for similar behavior with more serious consequences. Hilcorp’s repeated failure to comply with AOGCC rules and regulations combined with ineffective corrective actions, warrant increased civil penalties to deter similar behavior,” the order said.
Also influencing the fine size is the duration of the offenses. At one well, the unauthorized injection continued for 759 days, the AOGCC said. At the other well, the unauthorized injection went on for 480 days.
Enriched gas is sometimes injected into oil fields to boost oil recovery.
The enforcement action has been in the works for several months.
The AOGCC said that in February, it formally notified Hilcorp that it was investigating the use of enriched gas at the two wells. Hilcorp then conducted an internal investigation, responding to the AOGCC in March with an analysis of the root cause and actions to correct the problem and prevent a recurrence.
Because of that response earlier in the year, the AOGCC said it is not requiring Hilcorp to submit any further written explanation.
Hilcorp has the right to appeal the $695,900 fine. If it does not appeal, Hilcorp must pay within 30 days of the decision, the order said.
A company spokesperson said Hilcorp itself brought the violation to light and that it did not result in any safety or environmental problems.
“This issue involved a highly specific and previously unrecognized authorization gap that neither Hilcorp nor prior Prudhoe Bay operators had identified. We discovered it through an internal review informed by recent AOGCC findings, and we immediately notified the Commission and self-reported all details,” Hilcorp spokesperson Matt Shuckerow said by email.
Shuckerow said the use of enriched gas is safe and permitted on many neighboring wells “as part of an effort to increase resource recovery, which results in increased royalty and revenue to the State of Alaska,” he continued.
“It caused no safety risks, environmental harm or impacts to resource conservation. We have completed a comprehensive review of all wells to ensure no similar gaps exist and will continue working transparently with AOGCC to uphold the highest standards of safety, conservation, and regulatory compliance,” he said.
Shuckerow did not address the question of appealing the fine.
Hilcorp entered Alaska in 2011, focusing first on the Cook Inlet basin, where it is now the dominant operator, before expanding to the North Slope in 2014. In 2020, when BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. sold its remaining Alaska assets to Hilcorp and ended its activities in the state, Hilcorp became the operator of the Prudhoe Bay unit. Prudhoe Bay is now co-owned by oil companies ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Hilcorp.
Since it began operating in Alaska in 2011, Hilcorp has been the subject of 20 AOGCC enforcement orders, including the latest order, according to the commission’s website. Eleven concerned violations on the North Slope and nine concerned violations at Cook Inlet sites, according to the website.
Five of those orders were issued in 2024, including one that assessed a $452,100 fine for unauthorized injections at Prudhoe Bay of a type of gas used to enhance oil recovery.
Different type of enhanced recovery technique gets OK
Although the AOGCC faulted Hilcorp for its unauthorized use of enriched gas at Polaris, it has approved Hilcorp’s plan to try out a different type of enhanced recovery at the field.
The commission on Nov. 25 gave the go-ahead for Hilcorp to use polymer flooding at a different Polaris well for a 12-month test period.
The approval is unrelated to the Nov. 24 order and decision on the enhanced gas violation.
Polymers are natural or synthetic materials, such as cellulose and nylon, that consist of chains of molecules arrayed in a repeated pattern.
Polymer flooding in oil fields injects water-soluble polymers into reservoirs to increase oil recovery. The injected polymers blend with water to better sweep out oil. Polymer flooding is considered an effective technique to boost oil production, but it does not work in all types of reservoirs, according to scientists. The technique is most appropriate for enhanced recovery of heavier oils, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Hilcorp pioneered the use of polymer flooding on the North Slope, starting in 2018 with a test project conducted at Milne Point in collaboration with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The pilot project was deemed successful, and Hilcorp now uses the technique more widely at Milne Point, where polymer flooding has allowed for much better recovery of the thicker oil that is within that field.
Hilcorp in 2014 acquired 50% ownership in Milne Point from BP and became the operator that year. Hilcorp took full ownership in 2020, after the acquisition from BP was completed.
The company has for years considered expanding some of the practices that have improved production at Milne Point to the parts of the Greater Prudhoe Bay Unit, which also holds some heavier oil. The now-authorized 12-month test at the Polaris well is part of that strategy.
Research biologists pause among the wetlands of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, with the Brooks Range in the background. (Photo by Lisa Hupp/USFWS)
AP- Alaska Native tribes and conservation groups sued the federal government Wednesday, seeking in at least three separate lawsuits to overturn a land exchange aimed at allowing a road to be built through a national wildlife refuge.
Legal challenges to the land exchange agreement reached last month between Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and an Alaska Native village corporation include claims that it was not properly analyzed, that it poses risks to sensitive habitats and that it could threaten migratory birds that some Alaska Natives rely on for food.
King Cove, a community of about 870 people near the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, has for years pushed to have a road built through the refuge for access to an all-weather airport at Cold Bay, about 18 miles (29 kilometers) away.
Alaska’s governor and congressional delegation have supported the cause, calling it a life and safety issue that would allow for emergency medical evacuations. The delegation has said King Cove’s airstrip can frequently be closed for bad weather, and that high seas can make travel by water between King Cove and Cold Bay challenging.
Terms of the agreement include conveyance by the government of about 490 acres (199 hectares) to King Cove Corp. for a potential road corridor, while the corporation would convey about 1,739 acres (703.7 hectares) to the refuge and relinquish selection rights to additional land. A decision document, signed by Burgum, says the proposed road would be about 19 miles, much of which would be within the refuge. It says it would be up to the corporation to obtain the necessary permits and funding for a road.
Elizabeth Peace, an Interior Department spokesperson, said by email Wednesday that the department doesn’t comment on litigation.
One of the lawsuits was filed by the Native Village of Hooper Bay, Native Village of Paimiut, Chevak Native Village and the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group. The tribal governments are hundreds of miles north of King Cove but have expressed concern that a road could impact migratory birds they rely on that stop along the way at the refuge.
Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson, traditional council president of the Native Village of Paimiut, in a statement called the refuge’s eelgrass wetlands “a lifeline for emperor geese, black brant and other birds that feed our families and connect us to Indigenous relatives across the Pacific.”
“We are joining this lawsuit because defending Izembek is inseparable from defending our subsistence rights, our food security and our ability to remain Yup’ik on our own lands,” she said.
Lawsuits also were filed by a coalition of conservation groups, represented by Trustees for Alaska, and by Defenders of Wildlife.
Low clouds hang over Cook Inlet north of Anchor Point on Oct. 23, 2025. The Trump administration is planning an oil and gas lease sale in federal territory of the inlet. It is set to be the first of at six Cook Inlet lease sales that Congress has mandated by held between now and 2032. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
The Trump administration on Monday outlined its plans to auction 1 million acres of federal offshore territory in what it has called the “Big Beautiful Cook Inlet Oil and Gas Lease Sale.”
The lease sale, to be held early next year under terms detailed in a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, is to be the first of at least six mandated for Cook Inlet through 2032 under the sweeping budget bill that Congress passed this summer. The bill also mandated 30 lease sales through 2040 in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“President Trump’s signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act marked the beginning of a new chapter for oil and gas development in the Gulf of America and Alaska’s Cook Inlet,” Matt Giacona, acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said in a news release issued Friday. “BOEM is now moving forward with a predictable, congressionally mandated leasing schedule that will support offshore oil and gas development for decades to come.”
In the statement, the agency, which is the Department of the Interior division that oversees offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters, touted the 12.5% royalty offered in the lease sale as an incentive to bidders. The agency statement noted that 12.5% is the lowest royalty rate allowed for offshore oil and gas production in federal territory.
Lease sale bids are to be opened on March 4.
Cook Inlet lease sales held in recent years, whether in federal or state territory, have drawn little industry interest. That is despite the use of some incentives, such as royalty-free terms.
There are only eight active leases in federal waters of Cook Inlet, all held by Hilcorp, the inlet’s dominant operator. One of those leases was acquired in a sale held at the end of 2022 under a requirement inserted into the Inflation Reduction Act; Hilcorp’s bid was the only one in that lease sale.
Hilcorp also was the sole bidder in a 2017 federal Cook Inlet lease sale, when it acquired 14 leases. Last year, it relinquished seven of those leases.
A map shows the planning area for the federal Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sale scheduled for early 2026. The lease sale is the first of six mandated under the budget bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in July. (Map provided by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management)
There is no pending exploration plan for Hilcorp’s eight federal Cook Inlet leases, according to the BOEM website.
Muted industry interest in past sales
Annual areawide Cook Inlet lease sales held by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, for both offshore and onshore state territory, have also produced few bids in recent years.
The 2025 state sale drew five bids, according to results released by the division in June. The 2024 sale drew three bids. The 2023 state sale drew six bids. Each sale offered more than 700 tracts spread over about 3 million acres, and in two of those lease sales, Hilcorp was the sole bidder.
The agency’s Federal Register notice kicked off a 60-day comment period — but only for Alaska’s governor and for local governments. It is unclear whether tribal governments or any other organizations are included among those invited to comment; a question posed to the Department of the Interior press office was not answered by Monday afternoon.
An automatic emailed message from BOEM spokesperson Jennifer Russo said she could not respond to questions on Monday because of the federal government shutdown.
One environmental group that opposes the lease sale plans to submit public comments nonetheless.
“They’re not asking for comments from the public. But we are still planning to make sure that the people who live in Cook Inlet and Alaska and around the country, their voices will be heard,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
There appears to be no prohibition on public comments, Freeman noted.
Even though recent Cook Inlet lease sales have drawn little industry interest, he said the center has worries about future leasing.
“We hope that there’s no bids, but we’re taking it very seriously,” he said. “All it takes is one drill rig, one pipeline to burst, and it would be over for the inlet.”
The upcoming Cook Inlet lease sale process is separate from a court-mandated review of the 2022 lease sale.
A lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations resulted in a federal court ruling last year that found the presale analysis to be flawed. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ordered BOEM to conduct further analysis of leasing impacts to endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales and other natural resources.
BOEM, in a Federal Register notice published in September, said it plans to complete the supplemental impact statement by the end of the year.
The agency said that it will not release the draft study for public comment and will hold no public hearings on the draft, a departure from procedures followed in past environmental studies.
The lack of public comment opportunities or planned public hearings has angered some Cook Inlet area organizations.
Cook Inletkeeper, an environmental group, has launched a petition drive calling for the normal public process to be reinstated.
US Department of Interior Sec. Doug Burgum at a news conference with Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Alaska’s congressional delegation US Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Nick Begich, and Sen. Dan Sullivan, announcing several actions advancing resource development projects in Alaska on Oct. 23, 2025 (Screenshot)
The federal government is proceeding with efforts to expand drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, mining in northwest Alaska, and construction of a road between King Cove and Cold Bay on the Alaska Peninsula, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Thursday.
At an event in Washington, D.C. that was dubbed “Alaska Day” by the federal department, Burgum signed a series of documents pertaining to all three projects as well as an ongoing effort by the federal government to give land to the families of Alaska Native Vietnam War veterans.
“This is our first, this won’t be our last, Alaska Day. We have a lot more things to accomplish, a lot more things to celebrate going forward,” said Burgum, flanked by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and all three members of the state’s congressional delegation.
“I told the president, it’s like Christmas every morning,” said Dunleavy. “I wake up, I go to look at what’s under the proverbial Christmas tree to see what’s happening. And here’s another example of more presents for not just Alaska, but for this country.”
Tribal and environmental groups opposed to the three development projects saw Thursday’s action differently, with Defenders of Wildlife, a national group, dubbing the event “Alaska Sellout Day.”
“Today’s announcements are the latest step in Donald Trump’s plan to sell out our wildest landscape and natural heritage to corporate polluters,” said Dan Ritzman, director of conservation for the Sierra Club.
What was done on Thursday
Burgum signed previously announced permits for the 211-mile Ambler Road, which is intended to connect the Dalton Highway with a series of potential mine sites in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska.
He also signed a record of decision for the federal government’s oil and gas drilling program in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of northeast Alaska.
That re-establishes a program that had been in place during the first term of President Donald Trump but which was subsequently reversed by President Joe Biden.
Burgum also reversed the Biden administration’s decision to suspend oil and gas leases issued by the federal government in 2020 to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
Barring further litigation, that move clears the way for AIDEA — Alaska’s state-owned development bank — to begin seismic surveys that could reveal the amount of oil available within parts of the Arctic refuge’s coastal plain.
While the Ambler and ANWR actions effectively took the projects back to where they stood in 2020, the King Cove road is now closer to construction at any point in its decades-long development process.
Envisioned as a gravel road between King Cove and an all-weather airport at Cold Bay, the road would pass through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, a nationally important bird sanctuary.
Eleven miles of new road are needed to link existing roads to the two towns, but those 11 miles would pass through a wilderness area.
On Thursday, Burgum signed documents that complete a land exchange between King Cove Corp., the local Alaska Native corporation, and the federal government. King Cove Corp. gives up about 31,200 acres to expand the refuge, and in return, it receives the 490 acres of refuge land needed to complete the road.
In a move with more limited statewide impact, Burgum signed paperwork awarding three Alaska Native Vietnam War veterans with 160-acre plots of land under a federal allotment program. As of March, 453 veterans and their families had requested plots authorized under legislation authored by Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan.
For King Cove, a medevac-avoiding road moves forward
King Cove’s airport is frequently closed by bad weather, and since 2014, there have been more than 100 Coast Guard medevacs from the community because regular air ambulance service was unavailable.
Murkowski, who has previously vowed to complete the road, noted that this is the third time that the federal government has embarked on a land exchange for the road, with the prior two attempts blocked and reversed by litigation.
“We’ve reached a point with the King Cove exchange that we haven’t yet before, and that’s actually the official patent being issued to KCC, so we’re one step further. I think that’s important,” she said.
The road, though supported by local residents, is opposed by some Yukon-Kuskokwim river delta tribal leaders and subsistence bird hunters who fear its effects on wildlife.
“Surely, the people of King Cove can see the value of leaving the habitat for so many species intact would be far more valuable than any road could be,” said Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson, Traditional Council President of the Native Village of Paimiut, one of several communities that have supported lawsuits seeking to prevent road construction.
Rebecca Noblin, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity who has fought the road on behalf of several area villages, said Thursday that “we have significant questions about the legality of the exchange. We, along with the Native Villages of Hooper Bay and Paimiut, expect to bring those issues to court soon. Road construction will also require additional permits, including an Army Corps 404 permit and Endangered Species Act consultation, so this is far from a done deal.”
With Ambler and ANWR, a triumph of economics over environment
On the first day of his second term in office, Trump issued an executive order seeking to encourage oil and gas development, mining and logging in Alaska.
US Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, US Dept. of Interior Sec. Doug Burgum, and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy pose for a photo at a news conference announcing advancements to several resource projects, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Oct. 23, 2025 (Screenshot)
Elected officials said they see Thursday’s actions in line with that decision.
Alaska Republican Rep. Nick Begich said projects like the Ambler Road and ANWR drilling matter because they create jobs.
“We need the jobs. We need high-paying, good jobs, and these resource industry jobs fit that bill completely. And so whether it’s mining, timber, oil and gas development or other resources, these are necessary for the functioning of Alaska’s economy,” he said.
The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is believed to contain billions of barrels of recoverable oil that could be sold on global markets.
Sullivan noted that previous North Slope oil development has been good for the region’s residents.
“The life expectancy, mostly of the Native people in our state, has increased in the North Slope and the Northwest Arctic Borough and by dramatic numbers … and a lot of that is due to the benefits that come from responsible resource development: jobs, revenues, water and sewer, gymnasiums, health clinics. So it’s a real life and death issue,” he said.
The predominantly Alaska Native town of Kaktovik is located on Barter Island, within the refuge.
“Developing ANWR’s Coastal Plain is vital for Kaktovik’s future,” said the town’s mayor, Nathan Gordon Jr., in a written statement. “Taxation of development infrastructure in our region funds essential services across the North Slope, including water and sewer systems to clinics, roads, and first responders. Today’s actions by the federal government create the conditions for these services to remain available and for continued progress for our communities.”
To date, no oil companies have shown interest in drilling within the refuge, leaving only Alaska’s state-owned development bank, which won leases in a 2020 sale, to work there.
So far, no actual work has taken place because of repeated lawsuits seeking to overturn the sale.
The bank, which has filed several lawsuits over federal restrictions on drilling within the refuge, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Several legal challenges to the 2020 ANWR plan of development — which was restored Thursday — are still pending in federal court.
Some of those challenges revolve around the possible effects that ANWR development and the burning of those fossil fuels will have on climate change.
Thursday’s announcement came just a week after the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated coastal communities in southwestern Alaska. Experts say that storm was worsened by climate change.
Murkowski said she does not shy away “from the fact that the impact of that typhoon was made more fierce and more destructive because it was able to travel over a large body of what is now warmer, open ocean with lack of ice. I get that, and I call it climate change.”
At the same time, people worldwide are continuing to consume fossil fuels. Murkowski said that for her, the choice is straightforward: Will they get those fossil fuels from Alaska or some place with worse environmental standards?
“I’d much rather be producing in Alaska, than just across the Bering Strait there, over in Russia, where I don’t think that they respect the same level of environmental standards and safeguards,” she said. “So is it complicated? Yes. But am I proud of how Alaska has led in terms of meeting environmental standards that are amongst the highest in the world? I am.”
What comes next for Ambler, King Cove and ANWR?
All three development projects boosted by the federal government on Thursday are a long way from construction, both supporters and detractors say.
In all three cases, proponents need to obtain additional federal permits and will have to cope with lawsuits brought by opponents.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice has repeatedly been involved in lawsuits against the federal government over the issue of arctic refuge drilling.
“Interior has re-adopted the maximally destructive plan from President Trump’s first term,” said Earthjustice attorney Erik Grafe, by email on Thursday. “That plan was unlawful in 2020 and is still unlawful today. The bedrock environmental laws that protect the Arctic Refuge’s irreplaceable natural resources remain despite Congress passing reconciliation bills on leasing in the refuge.”
The Gwich’in Steering Committee, represented by attorneys from Trustees for Alaska, is among the organizations that have repeatedly sued to block drilling in ANWR.
The committee is concerned about the effect that refuge development would have on local caribou herds used by subsistence hunters. In a statement, the committee’s executive director, Kristen Moreland, implied that further litigation will come.
“This action by the Trump administration is a direct attack on the Gwich’in, who have for decades been a voice for the caribou and stood against the destruction of the Arctic Refuge. A leasing program that would open the entire Coastal Plain completely ignores the impacts that oil and gas development would have on the land, on wildlife, and on our communities,” she said.
“We condemn these efforts by the Trump administration to exploit the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd for short-term gain, and we know that we are not alone. We will continue to raise our voices and fight for the protection of this sacred land and for our way of life.”
The Arctic National WIldlife Refuge coastal plain at the outflow of the Hulahula River, is seen on July 8, 2019. (Photo by Danielle Brigida/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Along the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, pictured here, runs a smaller-diameter natural gas line used to fuel the oil pipeline’s pumps. That small-diameter line could be a source of fuel for a new Bitcoin mining operation on the North Slope. (Arthur T. LaBar/Flickr under Creative Commons License)
Despite the federal government shutdown, the Trump administration is proceeding with new oil leasing on Alaska’s North Slope.
The U.S. Bureau of Land management said Tuesday it will be accepting nominations for areas to auction in an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The call for nominations is the first step in the leasing process; comments on suggested leasing areas will be taken for 30 days, the BLM said.
The information is in a Federal Register notice scheduled to be published on Wednesday.
The pending lease sale is in accordance with the sweeping budget bill, signed by President Donald Trump on July 5, that he and his supporters call “The One Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill requires the BLM to hold at least five lease sales, each offering at least 4 million acres, over the next 10 years.
“Congress directed a program of expeditious leasing and development in the NPR-A to support America’s energy independence, and that is more important today than ever,” Kevin Pendergast, Alaska state director for the BLM, said in a statement. “This lease sale gets us back on track toward further exploration and development in the reserve, as Congress envisioned.”
The upcoming lease sale is intended to be under new Trump-era rules that remove protections enacted by the Biden administration, the Obama administration and earlier administrations, dating back to former President Ronald Reagan’s term.
A female caribou runs near Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska on June 12, 2022. The Teshekpuk caribou herd gives birth to its calves in the land around the vast lake, the largest on the North Slope. Under the Trump administration, long-protected areas and around the lake will be opened to oil development. (Photo by Ashley Sabatino/ U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Under the Trump rules, more than 18.5 million of the reserve’s 23 million acres are designated as available for leasing. That includes the ecologically sensitive Teshekpuk Lake, the largest lake on the North Slope, which is important habitat for migratory birds and which is adjacent to the calving grounds for the Teshekpuk caribou herd.
Lease sales in the reserve were held about every two years from 1999 to 2010 and annually from 2011 through 2019, but with protections for certain areas, including Teshekpuk Lake.
The Obama administration had a policy of coordinating those federal auctions with the annual areawide North Slope, Beaufort Sea and Brooks Range Foothills sales held by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas. Coordinated timing on those enhanced industry interest and convenience, agency officials said at the time.
No lease sales have been held since the 2019 auction held under the first Trump administration. After that, that administration shifted its focus to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Two lease sales were held in the refuge, in January 2021 and January 2025. The first of those sales drew few bids, none of them from major oil companies, and the 2025 sale drew no bids.
Environmentalists criticized the move toward a sale during a government shutdown.
“The Trump administration’s outrageous announcement shows a sad truth in our country today: The government is open for resource extraction corporations and closed for the people,” Andy Moderow, senior director of policy at Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement. “At a time when our government is shut down and essential public workers aren’t getting paid, it’s outrageous that federal leaders are prioritizing oil and gas sales over getting the country back on its feet.”
Red-necked phalaropes forage in the wetlands found in the northeastern section of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Teshekpuk Lake and the wetlands around it comprise one of the top habitats for migratory birds anywhere in the Arctic. The Trump administration has opened those wetlands to oil development; they had been off-limits for decades. (Photo by Bob Wick/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, echoed that sentiment in a different statement.
“The Trump government clearly isn’t shut down for the oil industry, with millions upon millions of Alaska’s western Arctic recklessly open for exploitation and desecration,” he said.“We can’t let this administration destroy key habitat for cherished wildlife like caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds for nothing more than stuffing oil barons’ pockets.”
A Department of the Interior spokesperson said certain BLM employees remain on duty to handle energy issues, a subject that Trump has said needs emergency action.
“Activities necessary to address the President’s declaration of a national energy emergency are continuing during the lapse in appropriations. The Bureau of Land Management has staff working in both exempt and excepted status to carry out essential energy-related responsibilities, including review of nominations for the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska lease sale,” said Alice Sharpe, senior public affairs specialist with the department, in an email.
Unlike the Arctic refuge, which is on the eastern side of the North Slope, the National Petroleum Reserve on the western side of the North Slope has drawn industry interest. The reserve is underlain by an oil-rich formation called Nanushuk that has yielded significant discoveries on both federal and state land.
Some of those discoveries have resulted in producing oil fields, and more are expected. ConocoPhillips’ huge Willow project, which the company has said will produce up to 180,000 barrels a day from reserves totaling about 600 million barrels, is located in the reserve and is set to become the North Slope’s westernmost producing oil field.
Cook Inlet waves roll onto the beach at Kenai on Aug. 14, 2018. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is preparing a supplemental environmental impact statement to address legal deficiencies in a 2022 lease sale. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Federal regulators will accept no public comments on a pending environmental study of oil leasing in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, a U.S. Department of the Interior agency announced through a Federal Register notice published Thursday.
There will be no public comment period and no public hearing on a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for a Cook Inlet lease sale that was held in 2022 but found to be legally flawed, said U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages oil and gas development in federal offshore areas.
The rejection of public comments is in accordance with Trump administration changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, the 55-year-old law that guides federal decisions about activities that may have environmental impacts. The changes are aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and developing infrastructure projects.
BOEM is following the administration’s updated NEPA regulations and a new department handbook on the law, which went into effect on July 3, said Elizabeth Pearce, a U.S. Department of the Interior senior public affairs specialist.
“This Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is narrowly focused on addressing the court’s concerns, without a separate public-comment round – streamlining what is typically a protracted, multi-year process down to a few months.” Pearce said by email on Thursday.
Although no public comments will be accepted, the public will be able to read the new environmental impact statement when it is finished, Pearce added. “The completed Supplemental EIS will be posted online so Alaskans and other stakeholders can see exactly how we addressed the court’s limited concerns,” she said.
The Cook Inlet environmental study stems from a federal lease sale that was held on Dec. 30, 2022. It drew only one bid.
Earlier in the year, the Biden administration had planned to cancel the sale because of lack of industry interest. But at the urging of former Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the Inflation Reduction Act that narrowly passed Congress that year included a mandate for the sale to take place. Hilcorp Inc., the dominant oil and gas operator in Cook Inlet, submitted the only bid.
In response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups days before the lease sale was held, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled in 2024 that the lease sale had been held without adequate study of impacts to endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales. Her ruling put the lease sale results on hold, and she ordered BOEM to conduct a new review addressing impacts to the belugas.
BOEM’s announcement about the lack of public comment opportunities was blasted by environmental plaintiffs in the case.
“BOEM’s decision to exclude the public from its supplemental environmental statement is unacceptable. Public participation is not a box to check — it is the heart of NEPA,” Loren Barrett, co-executive director the water conservation non-profit Cook Inletkeeper, said in an emailed statement.
BOEM’s earlier lapses concerning Cook Inlet belugas were “not minor oversights; they are serious errors that must be corrected with rigor and transparency and a proper review that allows the time for public input,” Barrett added.
Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity, also cited risks to the endangered beluga population, which is estimated to number a little over 300.
“This secrecy around exploiting public waters for fossil fuels is completely unacceptable. It would only take one oil spill to devastate Cook Inlet and its beluga whales, which is why the law requires transparency for these dangerous sales,” Monsell said in a statement. “The court found that federal officials failed to look at several important factors that could harm endangered belugas, including vessel noise. If the agency hides its analysis, we won’t know whether these critical issues have been addressed to better protect the belugas.”
Hilcorp currently holds eight federal leases in Cook Inlet, including the sole lease acquired in the disputed 2022 sale. The company relinquished seven other federal leases in Cook Inlet. The BOEM website does not list any Hilcorp plans for exploring its remaining leases in the inlet.
The ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. building in Anchorage is seen on June 28, 2023. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
The top oil-producing company in Alaska is planning significant layoffs, it announced last week.
In a series of statements, the oil giant ConocoPhillips said it will be firing between 20% and 25% of its global workforce of about 13,000 people. That would mean between 2,600 and 3,250 layoffs worldwide.
“We are always looking at how we can be more efficient with the resources we have. As part of this process, we have informed employees that a 20% to 25% reduction in our global workforce, which includes employees and contractors, is anticipated. The majority of these reductions will take place in 2025,” said Rebecca Boys, director of external affairs for ConocoPhillips Alaska, on Thursday.
Boys declined to say how many people the company employs in Alaska, but prior documents published by the company say that it has “about 1,000 people in Alaska,” and of those, about 80% live in the state.
Altogether, the oil and gas industry employed 8,800 people in Alaska as of July, according to state statistics. If ConocoPhillips were to lay off a quarter of its Alaska workforce, it likely would reverse an upward trend for the oil and gas industry here.
Since bottoming out at 6,100 people in November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the number of people employed by the oil and gas industry rose throughout President Joe Biden’s administration.
ConocoPhillips produces the most oil of any company operating on the North Slope and holds the second-most oil and gas lease area in the state.
According to state data, ConocoPhillips leases about 490,000 acres of Alaska land and water for oil and gas drilling. That’s behind only privately owned Hilcorp, whose holdings exceed 500,000 acres.
ConocoPhillips is developing the large Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which is expected to begin producing oil in 2029.
According to the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, ConocoPhillips is also planning to drill four exploration wells in other parts of the reserve this winter.
On its production side, ConocoPhillips was planning to drill 12 new production wells this year and next from the Kuparuk oilfield west of Prudhoe Bay.
May 14, 2018 – Wind turbines in Kodiak, Alaska. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
For years, urban Alaska utilities have been studying large-scale wind farms that could help break the state’s dependence on natural gas power — encouraged by the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits from the federal government.
Next summer, however, those tax credits will largely disappear for projects that haven’t started construction, a consequence of the tax bill that President Donald Trump signed in July.
Clean energy advocates, and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, had said they hoped that Alaska wind projects could still advance in time to qualify.
But in recent weeks, board members and executives at the cooperatively owned utilities have acknowledged that the timeline now appears too short — which means any large-scale projects will now have to be built without the generous federal subsidies, or wait to see if Congress reestablishes a more favorable tax regime.
Critics say the absence of major new renewable projects will leave the state dependent on imported, liquefied natural gas and could make consumers vulnerable to price spikes.
“There’s an argument to be made that these electric cooperatives, whose boards have a fiduciary responsibility to the member-owners, have really frittered away one of the greatest opportunities they’ve ever had to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars of value to their members,” said Phil Wight, an energy historian and professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks. “At the highest level, I think that’s a fair argument.”
Since Congress approved expanded tax credits in 2022, Alaska has seen no large-scale wind or solar projects begin construction, while other states like Wyoming and Texas have received billions of dollars in clean energy investment.
At a recent meeting, board members at Golden Valley Electric Association, the utility that generates power for Fairbanks area residents and mines, rejected a developer’s bid to advance a large-scale wind farm on a schedule driven by the expiring tax credits. Utility officials said there was still too much uncertainty about final pricing and whether the project could capture the credits.
Meanwhile, officials at Anchorage-based Chugach Electric Association, the state’s largest power utility, say that another large wind project they’ve been studying with the same developer also won’t be ready to start construction in time to qualify for the credits.
Jim Nordlund, a Chugach Electric Association board member, said that if the Anchorage-area project had captured the credits, it was still far from clear that it could have provided power more cheaply than his utility’s existing natural gas plants.
That’s even assuming prices will rise when local fuel supplies dry up and utilities begin importing liquefied natural gas in the next few years, added Nordlund, a self-described clean energy advocate.
The price of renewable power generally, he said, “is really high.”
Alaskans who are frustrated about the pace of wind and solar development shouldn’t blame the urban utilities, Nordlund added. Private companies, not the utilities themselves, have been advancing projects that failed to materialize, he said, and politics also played a big role.
“If you want to blame anybody for this, it would be that big bad bill. That’s what Trump wanted to do, and it worked,” Nordlund said. “It shut down, at least for the time being, our projects.”
But renewable energy boosters say that the urban utilities deserve at least some share of the blame for not advancing projects more urgently while the tax credits were in place.
The utilities could have developed large wind developments themselves, those advocates argue — or they could have done more to create a stable and attractive market for private developers.
“The utilities are uniquely bureaucratic and expensive in their own self-development. And they’re uniquely bureaucratic and obstinate and slow if a private company is developing,” said Ethan Schutt, who formerly managed the energy assets of an Indigenous-owned regional corporation.
Advocates say utility leaders have also failed to endorse, and in some cases outright opposed, legislation proposed multiple times in recent years to establish renewable energy quotas — which they say could have encouraged more private developers to work in the state.
Large-scale power projects “need to be thoughtfully implemented,” Natalie Kiley-Bergen, energy lead at an advocacy organization called Alaska Public Interest Research Group, said in an email.
“Had more progress been made in the last five years — even the last 15 years — to create a competitive market environment with regulatory and economic certainty for these projects, we could have seen responsible project commitments regardless of federal changes,” Kiley-Bergen said. “Not capitalizing on these tax credits is a product of years of moving slowly on the tremendous opportunities to diversify our energy generation.”
A risk of price spikes?
After its initial discovery in the 1950s, Cook Inlet, the offshore and onshore petroleum basin southwest of Anchorage, produced huge quantities of natural gas.
There was enough fuel to generate not just the vast majority of the region’s electric power, but also to supply plants that produced fertilizer and exported gas in liquefied form to Asia.
But those plants have now closed amid Cook Inlet production declines. And for more than a decade, the urban electric utilities have been contending with risk that gas supply won’t be adequate to meet demand.
Generous state tax credits temporarily approved by lawmakers in 2010 helped stimulate new drilling, but only temporarily, and they were subsequently repealed. Three years ago, Cook Inlet’s dominant producer, Hilcorp, warned utilities that they should not expect new long-term commitments of gas when their existing contracts expire in the coming years.
Clean energy advocates say that Alaskans’ dependence on gas-fired power — Chugach Electric Association generates 87% of its power from the fuel — makes residents vulnerable to both supply disruptions and fluctuations in price.
The utilities have responded to the looming local gas shortfall with plans for new infrastructure that could offload imported liquefied natural gas, known as LNG, shipped from Canada or the Gulf of Mexico.
But unlike gas from Cook Inlet, which producers have long sold at a fixed cost, utilities would likely have to buy LNG at rates that swing with the market, similar to the price of oil, according to Antony Scott, an analyst at the Renewable Energy Alaska Project advocacy group who once studied petroleum pricing for Alaska’s state government.
Given the risk of price spikes that could translate into higher electricity prices for consumers, diversifying with new wind and solar development should be a “no-brainer,” Scott said.
“It’s just like an investment portfolio. Do you want to invest only in Tesla?” Scott said. “A rational, prudent investor would have a diversified portfolio.”
Scott’s advocacy group, and others in Alaska, have pushed the utilities to diversify, in part through lobbying for the creation of the renewable energy quotas.
They cite analyses like a study released last year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which found that new renewables would be cheaper than burning gas in existing plants and, by 2040, could meet up to 80% of demand.
“Ratepayers in Alaska have been saying, for a long time, that we need renewable energy projects here at home, and we need to be capturing energy here at home,” said Alex Petkanas, clean energy and climate program manager at the Alaska Center conservation group. “This is not something that is a surprise — that our local natural gas supply is ending, and we need to replace that with new generation.”
A rejected agreement
Utility staff and board members agree that they need to diversify away from gas, with the chief executive of Matanuska Electric Association saying in 2022 that it was “untenable” to continue generating 85% of power from one type of fuel.
Chugach Electric Association aims to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2040, which would likely require sharp reduction in its use of natural gas. And a Golden Valley Electric Association strategic plan approved last year calls for the utility to finalize agreements with private developers to bring on “large-scale wind resources” at prices that will lower members’ power costs.
None of those utilities have moved to build major wind or solar farms themselves; instead, they’ve looked to private companies to do the construction and sell the power onto the grid.
Just one firm, Longroad Energy, has advanced large-scale wind projects on a timeline that could have qualified for the expiring tax credits. One is outside Anchorage in Chugach Electric Association’s region, and one is outside Fairbanks, in Golden Valley Electric Association’s region.
The Fairbanks area project, known as Shovel Creek Wind, could produce one-third of the power consumed by Golden Valley’s members — and even generate more than 100% of their demand at certain times, depending on the size of the development, said Golden Valley’s chief executive, Travis Million.
But at a July board meeting, Golden Valley’s board members rejected an agreement that Longroad had proposed to keep the project on a timeline to qualify for the credits.
Golden Valley, said Million, still needed more time to finish a study of how much it would have to spend on infrastructure upgrades and its existing fossil fuel plants in order to accommodate power from the new wind project. Utilities must balance swings in power production that stem from the natural variability of wind.
“Without having that step done, there’s just so much uncertainty about the cost. And not knowing what that end result would be to our members, we just could not commit,” Million said in a recent interview. The details of the proposed agreement — including Longroad’s estimated pricing — are confidential under a non-disclosure agreement.
There was additional uncertainty, Million added, about whether the Trump administration, which has been hostile to wind power, would grant the credits even if Shovel Creek advanced on the required timeline.
But Million also acknowledged that the utility could have done more work earlier to speed up the process.
“We should have done a lot of these studies on the front end, to really understand sizing and needs on Golden Valley’s system, before we really started going down this path with trying to find developers,” Million said.
Longroad, through an Anchorage-based consultant, declined to comment. Million said that Golden Valley plans to finish its study and hasn’t ruled out advancing Shovel Creek on a slower timeline than Longroad’s proposal.
The utility is also studying a substantial, if smaller, wind project that could still qualify for the tax credits.
“We have to take control”
In Anchorage, meanwhile, officials with Chugach Electric Association said that Longroad’s work on the nearby Little Mount Susitna wind project slowed as the company focused on advancing Shovel Creek.
The developer, said Chugach board member Nordlund, isn’t ready to make the initial investment in Little Mount Susitna and couldn’t do the continuous work required in order to take advantage of the tax credits — though the utility, he added, hasn’t given up on the project moving forward in the future.
Nordlund ran for the Chugach board in 2023 as an advocate for wind and solar, saying then that “the time to act on renewables is now.”
But he said in a recent interview that there’s “misinformation” circulating that utilities are dismissing proposed wind and solar developments that would generate power more cheaply than natural gas, when that’s not clearly the case.
Chugach has its own non-disclosure agreement with Longroad that Nordlund said bars him from getting specific about prices.
But speaking generally, he added, Alaska is a tough market for private developers, compared to the Lower 48 and foreign countries where they otherwise might invest.
Construction costs in Alaska are higher given the remote setting, harsh environment and lack of contractors competing for business, Nordlund said; the relatively small consumer base also means that developers can’t capture economies of scale.
“I think we need to create a better climate for independent power producers to do business in Alaska,” Nordlund said. The stalled legislation to establish renewable energy quotas could have helped, he added, by giving those private developers more certainty that the utilities were “serious” about bringing on wind and solar projects.
“More could have been done,” he said.
Nonetheless, Nordlund said he thinks the inherently “conservative” culture of Alaska’s utilities is changing, with executives increasingly open to accommodating wind and solar power.
Chugach officials say the utility is still pursuing renewables and remains open to proposals from developers — though they are now refocusing on more modest projects that they can advance in-house, at least in the early stages. Viable projects could then, potentially, be handed off to private developers.
At meetings in recent weeks, board and staff members have discussed a small-scale solar farm that Chugach is studying at the site of one of its existing gas power plants on the far side of Cook Inlet.
They’ve also heard a presentation from a consultant who is examining potential sites for new hydroelectric development, though those projects would face a lengthy permitting process.
“We now have to take control and get in the lead,” Dustin Highers, Chugach’s vice president for corporate programs, said at a recent board meeting.
But some experts like Wight, the energy historian, remain skeptical that those efforts will end up displacing very much gas, with the exception of the smaller wind project in the Fairbanks area that he said could still “make a real difference.”
Pursuing smaller projects with better coordination between regions could be a better strategy, Wight said. But failing that, he said he expects utilities to largely continue their dependence on natural gas — whether through imported LNG, or through a proposed pipeline project from Alaska’s North Slope that’s struggled to secure commitments from investors.
“They’re going to dabble a little bit in renewables here and there, and then they’re just going to hope for cheap gas,” Wight said. “As a state, we’ve been so oil- and gas-dependent for so long that I do think there’s a cultural barrier there, to bring in the new folks who want to think differently.”
Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.
Several oil projects are active in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. (Photo by Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management, CC BY-SA)
The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Thursday that it will revoke three documents intended to form the basis for limits on oil drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
Those documents, and the limits themselves, were issued in the last year of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Since his election, President Donald Trump has prioritized administrative moves that would reverse Biden decisions limiting oil and gas drilling in Alaska.
That decision followed prior decisions by the Biden administration and President Barack Obama’s administration that put about half the reserve off limits to oil development.
Thursday’s announcement, rescinding three planning documents, is a step toward that end.
On Wednesday, ahead of the official notice in the Federal Register, all three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation expressed support for the move and praised the Trump administration for taking action.
