A single caribou stands in 2019 amid cottongrass and other tundra plants near the Hulahula River in the Arctic National WIldlife Refuge. (Photo by Alexis Bonogofsky/U.S. Fish and WIldlife Service)
Calling it an attempt to “prioritize profit over people,” the Gwich’in Steering Committee and twelve conservation groups renewed litigation Tuesday to block the federal government’s oil and gas leasing program in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last vast, untouched habitats in the United States.
The lawsuit marks the latest chapter in a decades-old dispute over the refuge’s coastal plain, an undeveloped expanse of roughly 1.5 million acres believed to hold billions of barrels of oil. The area is also the ancestral homeland of two Indigenous groups long at odds about drilling there. For the Gwich’in, the tundraland is the center of their creation story — “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” For the Inupiat, who own the surface and mineral rights to a portion of the plain, it represents a promise of prosperity yet to be fulfilled.
Tuesday’s filing originates from a 2020 complaint entered during President Trump’s first term when he signed a 2017 tax bill that required two oil and gas lease sales for the area. Characterized then as a leasing program that “flagrantly breaks the law,” Trustees for Alaska, the firm representing the coalition, temporarily paused litigation to re-draft a plan with Biden-era agencies. That resulted in fewer acres to lease in the refuge and called for a sale to be held in January 2025 which drew zero bids.
In October, the Trump administration re-adopted the initial program and suggested that another auction would happen as soon as this winter. Meanwhile, seven oil and gas leases, canceled under Biden, were reinstated to the only entity that currently owns leases — the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the agency that promotes economic development in the state.
The amended lawsuit, in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, now seeks to vacate those leases.
“AIDEA’s leases were issued unlawfully on a number of grounds, as the Biden Administration acknowledged when cancelling them,” wrote Bridget Psarianos, a senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska.
“The Biden Administration cited violations of the Tax Act as the primary reason for cancelling the leases, the very law that allowed the Leasing Program to be established in the Refuge,” she said in an email Thursday.
In response to the litigation, AIDEA fired back with a prepared statement on Thursday.
“Federal law says the Secretary of Interior ‘shall,’ which means ‘must,’ “establish and administer a competitive oil and gas program for the leasing, development, production, and transportation of oil and gas in and from the Coastal Plain” read the statement.
“The Department of Interior simply does not have the ability or authority to refuse to develop the Coastal Plain.”
The groups joining the Gwich’in Steering Committee’s lawsuit include a roster of environmental organizations based in Alaska, nationally and in Canada. The Alaska Wilderness League, the Sierra Club, and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society-Yukon are each named as plaintiffs.
Together, they are suing the Interior Department and its secretary, Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lawsuit names seven other intervenor defendants, including the State of Alaska, the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, AIDEA and the American Petroleum Corporation, to name a few.
The debate of whether to drill in the Arctic Refuge has been mired in heated political and legal battles for nearly fifty years. The Gwich’in and Inupiat have long locked horns over the coastal plain.
Gwich’in beliefs center on a profound, spiritual connection with the Porcupine Caribou Herd that uses the coastal plain, viewing them not just as food, but as integral to Gwich’in identity, culture and survival.
“The Gwich’in have been fighting–and succeeding–for decades in protecting the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou Herd,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee in a press release, Tuesday.
Pro-oil Inupiats, meanwhile, see drilling in the refuge as their sovereign right. Under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, commonly referred to as ANCSA, which ceded Native land to the state and organized more than 200 tribes as for-profit corporations, part of the idea was that capitalism through natural resource development would create quality-of-life improvements for impoverished villages.
The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which co-owns rights to parts of the greater Prudhoe Bay oilfield, is ANCSA’s most shining example. In 2024, ASRC earned $5.5 billion in gross revenue, a financial windfall enjoyed by its eight affiliated Alaska Native villages — Kaktovik among them.
“In this modern time, we need the ability to be able to provide jobs and resources for our families,” said Charles Lampe, president of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation.
The tribal leader and whaling captain said he took issue with Gwich’in interference in Inupiat economic affairs, backed by well-funded nonprofits, and especially by those from outside. He pointed out that Kaktovik is the only settlement situated within the coastal plain.
“It’s unfortunate the way that our two Indigenous tribes have been pitted against each other,” Lampe said. “And the way they’re using that animal — the caribou — as a reason to push back on our Inupiat people, our Inupiat right to be able to provide an economic future for our community.”
The Gwich’in Steering Committee did not immediately respond to questions addressing that criticism.
As temperatures in the Arctic continue to warm far faster than the rest of the planet, the Trump administration has been working to commodify Alaska’s natural resources, opening up previously protected waters to oil and gas drilling, and allowing for other contentious projects, such as the 211-mile-long Ambler road to cut through the fragile foothills of the Brooks Range.
Among these plans is also the repeated promise to ramp up Arctic drilling. But oil companies have shown little interest in the last two lease sales. As of now, there has been no public notice for another lease sale.
For AIDEA’s part, the company was seeking professional support to carry out three-dimensional seismic testing of the refuge’s coastal plain, according to a request for proposals posted last summer with an early August deadline.
The only available seismic data for the area is dated by three decades and was gathered with less-advanced technology. As a result, no one knows how much crude actually lies beneath the plain, though the U.S. Geological Survey estimates it could be anywhere between four-to-11 billion barrels of oil. A more exact read will require heavy trucks with treads to roll across the snowy tundra sending acoustic signals below to detect oil and gas deposits.
The Gwich’in and others warn in their amended complaint that the heavy equipment could harm maternal polar bears who make their dens and give birth in the snow along the coastal plain.
In its Thursday statement, AIDEA said the Gwich’in lawsuit “misses the mark.”
“The Coastal Plain represents an estimated $2.3 billion a year from multiple revenue sources to the State of Alaska and royalties to grow and build the Permanent Fund. Revenue that would be extremely helpful to the State Treasury,” it said.
The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason who determined, last year, that the Biden administration did not have the legal authority to cancel AIDEA’s leases.
