Fossil Energy – Lease Sale Alaska
No companies bid for the chance to drill in more than 1 million acres of water off Alaska’s Cook Inlet, the Interior Department said earlier this week.
The Trump administration did not receive a single bid for its offer of new offshore oil and gas exploration opportunities in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, dealing a blow to President Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill,’ agenda.
The attempted sale of rights to drill in more than 1 million acres was the first of six offshore oil and gas auctions in Alaska that Republicans mandated last year when they passed Trump’s sweeping tax law.
It was seen as a key test of the industry’s appetite for investment in a state that Trump has called a ‘natural resource warehouse’, and essential for his energy dominance agenda of maximizing domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal.
“This is a huge embarrassment for Trump’s Alaska fossil fuel fantasy,” said Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
