Every prediction about Trump's ANWR oil lease intentions proved wrong

One of the puzzles about the Trump administration is why there has been no oil lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Congress approved a lease sale three years ago and ANWR oil development has been the subject of endless Alaska political jabber for 40 years.

It has been built up by generations of politicians as the Next Big Thing that could solve all of our economic problems.

Trump, who has boasted about opening ANWR to oil exploration for nearly three years—almost always mentioning that it was something that Ronald Reagan had failed to accomplish—had plenty of time to get a lease sale completed, but he never got it done. He often claimed falsely that ANWR could be the largest oil field in the world.

I suspect the reason the sale didn’t happen is that the industry made it clear to the Trump administration that a lease sale would not attract the giant bids envisioned by Alaska politicians and a sale could prove to be an embarrassment—not of riches, but of paltry bids from companies without the financial muscle to safely develop the area.

There are major questions facing any company that considers bidding on ANWR leases.

The economic and reputational risks, the prospect of extended court fights, the low price of oil, the expense of drilling in a frontier area, the growth of alternative energy supplies, the growing opposition by international banks to Arctic drilling, the chaos created by the pandemic and the certainty of climate change are among the many factors that have probably eroded faith in the mythology of the ANWR lease bonanza.

There have been a few Alaska politicians since 1980 who opposed oil development in ANWR, most of them quietly. The dream that has been built up by the Congressional delegation, the Alaska business community, newspapers and state politicians is that ANWR oil development is the foundation of our future, the boom that will keep the pipeline going and the money flowing.

That the pro-drilling Trump administration would stall an ANWR lease sale is a powerful signal that the dream is a shaky one and that oil companies are not willing to invest in the refuge and face the consequences. There are probably many reasons, but no credible explanation has been given for the delay by Trump’s Interior Department.

Rest assured, given the political sway of the industry and Trump’s receptiveness, there would have been a lease sale in 2019 or 2020 had the companies been pressing hard.

I guess Trump could try to squeeze a lease sale in before departing office in January—ignoring public notice deadlines to push something through—but what responsible company is going to bid serious money on leases that President-elect Biden promises to stop?

The provision to open ANWR to leasing, which may have been the price of getting Sen. Lisa Murkowski to support the 2017 GOP tax bill, has been law since 2017. The law calls for two lease sales to take place and that provision isn’t likely to go away under the new president.

The Biden opposition to ANWR drilling is clear, however, and there may be procedural and legal steps to stop development, regardless of the lease sale language.

On his campaign website, Biden pledges to save “America’s natural treasures by permanently protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other areas impacted by President Trump’s attack on federal lands and waters; and banning new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said early on that the goal was to have a lease sale before the end of the Trump term.

The Alaska delegation and the Trump administration Interior Department began predicting in 2018 that an ANWR lease sale was going to take place as soon as the middle of 2019. Then they said it would be before the end of 2019. Then they said it would be sometime in 2020.

“Murkowski still expects the administration to sell leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as soon as this summer,” Politico reported five months ago.

Politico reported in August that the goal of selling leases before the end of Trump’s first term was still alive.

Now there are predictions that a lease sale will take place before the end of 2021, the deadline in the law, setting up a major fight with Biden.

What’s not clear is why Trump was content just to talk about an ANWR lease sale, instead of conducting one.

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