By: Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon
Just six days before the Trump administration is set to open bids in the first of several oil and gas lease sales for federal territory in Arctic Alaska, critics were in court on Thursday trying to win injunctions to temporarily block some or all of the sale.
In one case, a Native organization called Grandmothers Growing Goodness and an environmental organization, The Wilderness Society, are seeking to fully prevent the scheduled March 18 sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a federal land unit stretching across Alaska’s western North Slope. The sale is offering 5.5 million acres, a larger geographic scope than most of the NPR-A lease sales held since 1999.
The Grandmothers Growing Goodness-Wilderness Society lawsuit is also seeking to overturn a new Trump administration management plan that opens 82% of the Indiana-sized reserve to oil development. Previously, only about half of the reserve was available for leasing, and several areas had protective status. Among those areas was Teshekpuk Lake and its adjacent wetlands and tundra, which provide key habitat for a caribou herd, numerous species of migratory birds, fish and other Arctic animals.
The other case, filed by an organization representing residents of Nuiqsut, is narrower.
Nuiqsut is the North Slope Inupiat village closest to existing NPR-A development. The Nuiqsut lawsuit is seeking to reinstate a program that protects an environmentally sensitive portion of the reserve that had been off-limits to oil development until the Trump administration jettisoned those protections.
The Nuiqsut lawsuit concerns a right-of-way agreement struck with the Biden administration and Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc., an organization formed by Nuiqsut’s city and tribal governments and its village for-profit Native corporation. The agreement, made final in 2024, protects about 1 million acres in the area of Teshekpuk Lake by barring leasing and other development not approved by Nuiqsut Trilateral.
In December, the Trump administration abruptly canceled that agreement, citing the potential for oil in the right-of-way area.
That cancellation, which was announced without any consultation or advance warning to the villagers, caused immediate harm, said Travis Annatoyn, an attorney for the Nuiqsut plaintiffs.
“From the moment Interior canceled the right of way, it advertised its intent to grant competing property rights on top of the subject acreage. That is an invitation to administrative and judicial chaos down the road,” Annatoyn told U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason during the day’s second hearing. “This court should foreclose that chaos by issuing a narrow injunction and stay for just the area of the right of way. We are not seeking relief across the reserve. We are not seeking relief sale-wide.”
Gleason stated her intention to issue rulings before bids are unsealed on Wednesday, Mar. 18.
She said Nuiqsut plaintiffs presented a more compelling case for a temporary injunction. That case concerns property rights, not just “more esoteric” environmental and subsistence protections.
“I do see that there are far greater reasons for injunction as to this preliminarily, until the merits can be fully fleshed out,” she told U.S. Justice Department attorney Paul Turcke, who argued on behalf of the Department of the Interior at both hearings.
If the Teshekpuk-area leases are sold and the case is later decided in Nuiqsut Trilateral Inc.’s favor, that could create challenges for numerous parties, Gleason said.
The right-of-way agreement stemmed from environmental and subsistence stipulations in the Biden administration’s 2023 approval of ConocoPhillips’ giant Willow project, and it was a condition of Nuiqsut residents’ endorsement of that project. Willow is set to become the North Slope’s westernmost producing oil field. Conoco Phillips expects production to start in 2029, with an eventual peak of 180,000 barrels per day.
The right-of-way agreement focused on the Teshekpuk Lake area because it is important to Inupiat subsistence food-gatherers.
Under Trump administration terms, Teshekpuk-area protections that had been in place for decades no longer exist. That auction offers some areas at Teshekpuk Lake that have never previously been open to leasing, including parts of the lake itself.
Turcke argued at Thursday’s hearing that the federal government already protects subsistence rights diligently and does not need the right-of-way agreement to do so.
He also argued that Congress has already effectively struck down the restrictions imposed by the right-of-way agreement.
That happened last year, when Congress passed the sweeping budget and tax bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” he said. The bill mandated a series of at least five NPR-A lease sales to be conducted over 10 years under terms of management plan proposed by the first Trump administration.
Turcke also disputed the idea that including the Teshekpuk area in the lease sale would cause irreparable harm to the Nuiqsut plaintiffs.
“It sounds concerning when they say that their property rights could be impacted, but again, the whole property right that they’re really talking about is the ability to just leave it the way it is right now. And that’s not going to change whether leases are issued or not,” he said.
But Annatoyn said Nuiqsut residents are already suffering impacts from the administration’s actions.
“They wake up every day. They see and smell and hear the trucks going to Willow,” he said.
Both lawsuits were originally filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia but transferred last month to federal court in Alaska.
