Alaska offshore lease sale fails to attract any bids

An oil and gas lease sale held in Cook Inlet offshore Alaska received no bids upon closing this week. The lease sale was the first of six to be held in Cook Inlet by the administration of US President Donald Trump under the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA).

The sale had been held from February 2 until March 3 and the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had intended to announce the results via livestream on March 4. Instead, the agency updated the webpage for the lease sale to say that no bids had been received, with few other details provided.

Roughly 1mn acres (4,047 square km) were up for auction in the lease sale.

Meanwhile, a state lease sale held in Cook Inlet at the same time by the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, whose results were also released this week, only drew one bid.

The results illustrate a relative lack of interest among producers in drilling offshore Alaska. This has been the case for some time, with the previous federal lease sale, held in Cook Inlet in 2022, only attracting one bid.

This lack of interest has been attributed in part to the relatively high costs of drilling offshore Alaska compared with cheaper opportunities onshore, such as shale plays in the Lower 48 states. However, it remains to be seen whether interest will return as shale matures further and new opportunities in those unconventional plays begin to dwindle.

In any case, the BOEM said it would continue to hold lease sales in Cook Inlet in accordance with the OBBBA in an effort to give the oil and gas industry a “regular, predictable federal leasing schedule that ensures we achieve President Trump's American Energy Dominance Agenda”.

This was echoed by the US Department of the Interior (DoI), which the BOEM is part of.

“Regular, predictable federal leasing is the foundation for maintaining domestic energy production,” the DoI said in a statement published in various media outlets. “Even when a sale receives no bids, maintaining a transparent, congressionally mandated schedule keeps Cook Inlet opportunities available for future investment, strengthens national readiness and supports Alaska’s role in meeting America’s energy needs.”