ANCHORAGE (AP) — The only oil company to bid in last year’s controversial federal lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has canceled the lease it bought and asked for a refund of its almost $800,000 payment.
Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, was one of three bidders that won leases during the rushed sale held in the waning days of the Trump administration. It was the first-of-its-kind sale for the refuge’s coastal plain.
Activity on the leases has been held up by a Biden administration environmental review.
The other winning bidders were an Alaska real estate developer and a state agency. No major oil companies submitted bids on the federal sale, despite years of anticipation and predictions of billion-dollar bidding by Alaska’s political leaders.
Regenerate Alaska requested the lease cancellation and its money back, according to a statement provided by the Interior Department’s media office that said the lease was canceled and that the “Office of Natural Resources Revenue refunded (the) full bonus bid and first year rentals.” The statement did not include the amount of the refund.
The company bid about $800,000 for the lease along the western boundary of the coastal plain. That part of the refuge is closest to existing oil field infrastructure. ExxonMobil’s Point Thomson development is to the west on state land.
88 Energy is exploring on state lands on Alaska’s North Slope but is not producing any oil. The company’s stock, listed in Australia, trade at about a penny a share. The company did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press left through the company’s website.
The prospect of any exploration in ANWR was put on hold last summer when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said it was moving ahead with a new environmental review of oil and gas leasing in the refuge after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said she found “multiple legal deficiencies” in a previous review that provided a basis for the lease sale.
In last year’s sale, Knik Arm Services, a real estate company, won one lease, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority state corporation acquired seven leases, paying more than $10 million plus owing annual rental fees. The state corporation is suing the federal government over the lease suspension.
A law passed by Congress in 2017 called for two lease sales. Another sale has not been held and is not scheduled. Though the state has long advocated for development of the federal acreage, industry interest appears to be waning.
Chevron and Hilcorp previously canceled their interests in older leases on a tract of land owned by an Alaska Native corporation within the wildlife refuge’s borders. The energy companies paid $10 million to end their deal with Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
Peter Winsor, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, called the lease cancellations the “clearest sign yet that there is zero interest out there in industrializing the wildest place left in America.”
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