WASHINGTON, March 18 — The US government will hold a sale today of oil and gas drilling rights in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve for the first time since 2019, the latest test of the industry’s appetite for acreage in the state.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management is offering 600 tracts covering 5.5 million acres (2.2 million hectares) to oil and gas companies. The bids will be opened and read via a livestream on the BLM’s website at 10 am Alaska time (1900 GMT). The sale is the first of at least five mandated by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he signed into law last year. His administration has sought ⁠to expand domestic oil and gas ⁠production and reverse Biden-era restrictions ⁠on drilling in the Alaska reserve. But ⁠oil and ⁠gas industry interest in snapping up leases in Alaska has been tepid in recent years. Drilling in the ⁠state is a high-risk endeavour involving decades of work and billions of dollars of investment. The industry failed to show up at all for a sale of offshore drilling rights in Alaska’s Cook Inlet earlier this month.

The NPR-A, as ⁠the 23-million-acre reserve is known, was designated for oil and gas exploration in the 1970s to address energy ⁠shortages.

The last NPR-A lease sale, in 2019, attracted US$11.3 million (RM44.2 million) in bids ⁠on ⁠1.05 million acres.

Alaska state officials and some native groups support oil and gas drilling because it contributes to tax revenue and creates jobs. Environmentalists argue oil and gas development destroys habitats for species such as polar bears and caribou. — Reuters