Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Will Remain Pristine

From NPR:

One of the Trump administration’s biggest environmental rollbacks suffered a stunning setback Wednesday, as a decades-long push to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ended with a lease sale that attracted just three bidders — one of which was the state of Alaska itself.

Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation was the only bidder on nine of the parcels offered for lease in the northernmost swath of the refuge, known as the coastal plain. Two small companies also each picked up a single parcel.

Half of the offered leases drew no bids at all.

“They held the lease in ANWR — that is history-making. That will be recorded in the history books and people will talk about it,” said Larry Persily, a longtime observer of the oil and gas industry in Alaska . “But no one showed up.”

The sale generated a tiny fraction of the revenue it was projected to raise.

Of course, this is what we’ve been predicting all long, as it’s due largely to the pathetic cost-return ratio: huge costs of arctic drilling compounded with the low price of oil. Making matters worse is the potential for a deal between the U.S. and Canada to import crude from the virtually limitless reserves in Alberta which, if completed, would push down the price of crude by $15 a barrel in the blink of an eye.

It’s also possible that potential bidders were aware that most Americans prefer the arctic as it is, and not ripped up by oil exploration, and thus, they saw that participating in this venture would sully their reputations.

In any case, some good news here.