Once eager to drill, oil companies exit leases in Arctic refuge
Three major oil companies have given up opportunities to explore for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after the industry and Republican politicians have spent decades working to gain access to the sensitive region.
Regenerate Alaska, a division of an Australian firm and the only oil company to directly acquire a tract on the refuge’s nearly 1.6 million-acre coastal plain, canceled its lease last month, after Chevron and Hilcorp, two other major oil companies, had also jettisoned their claims.
The exits make it far less likely that drilling will take place soon in a vast, unspoiled landscape that has achieved iconic status among environmentalists and has been fought over for half a century. An Anchorage real estate investor and the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority still hold leases there, but industry analysts say they lack the financial power and expertise to develop the remote area on their own.
Related Knowledge Center: Arctic energy development
The Arctic region of the United States has been both an important source of crude oil and the subject of unending political debate because of that oil.
The Prudhoe Bay oil field, along Alaska’s northern coast, for years accounted for about 20 percent of the nation’s oil production. Because of that production, the industry and its allies long have advocated exploration in the coastal plain of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, about 65 miles east of Prudhoe.