Second ‘Big Beautiful’ lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet planned after first sale flops
Published 8:30 am Monday, October 12, 2026
The Trump administration announced Oct. 9 that it will hold an offshore lease sale in federal waters of Cook Inlet next March, about a year after a similar federal lease sale offering the same acreage drew no bids.
The auction — to offer 1 million acres of federal offshore territory — is part of a series mandated under the sweeping tax and budget bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed last year. The new law requires at least six Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sales through 2032. The first of those sales, held in March, was called the Big Beautiful Cook Inlet 1, or BBC1; the upcoming sale is called Big Beautiful Cook Inlet 2, or BBC2.
The announcement was made by the Marine Minerals Administration, the newly named agency that combines the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
“Alaska remains central to America’s energy future, and Cook Inlet is an important part of that opportunity,” Mike Olsen, the agency’s acting director, said in a statement. “The BBC2 sale continues MMA’s work to carry out a predictable, congressionally mandated leasing schedule that supports domestic energy production, strengthens national readiness and provides a transparent process for the State of Alaska, local governments and industry.”
The lack of any bidding by oil and gas companies in the first “Big Beautiful” Cook Inlet lease sale is part of a pattern. A state lease sale held at the same time drew only a single bid.
The previous federal lease sale in Cook Inlet, a hotly disputed event that was at first canceled by the Biden administration for lack of industry interest but eventually held at the end of 2022 under a mandate from Congress, drew only a single bid. Federal Cook Inlet lease sales in 2007, 2009 and 2011 were canceled for lack of interest; a sale held in 2004 drew no bids.
Hilcorp, the dominant oil and gas operator in the Cook Inlet basin, was the only company holding federal leases in Cook Inlet. But in September, Hilcorp relinquished all eight of its leases – seven acquired in a 2017 lease sale and the sole lease acquired in the 2022 sale.
That leaves Cook Inlet’s federal waters with no active leases.
Environmentalists, pointing to that record, said the upcoming federal Cook Inlet lease sale is a waste of time.
“The government held an identical sale in March, and it failed completely with zero bids,” Hannah Foster, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said in a statement.
“Since then, the only company with any existing leases in federal Cook Inlet waters relinquished those leases. Nobody wants this sale, and yet this administration is determined to waste resources carrying it out – ignoring our bedrock environmental laws in the process,” she said. “Cook Inlet, which provides critical habitat for endangered beluga whales and serves as a hub for fishing and tourism, is too important for more reckless drilling.”
Cooper Freeman, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, likened Cook Inlet oil leasing to another highly touted development plan for Alaska that has failed to materialize into tangible development, the proposal to build a gasline and send North Slope liquefied national gas to Asian markets.
“I’m embarrassed for our state and our country that we have to endure these Trump lease sales in Cook Inlet again and again,” Freeman said in a statement. “It’s yet another massive waste of time, just like the Alaska LNG project, that will never pencil out and only diverts us from working toward a viable, renewable energy grid. Cook Inlet is being besieged by oil spills, data centers and gold mining. For the sake of our salmon, beluga whales and future generations of Alaskans, we have to start treating it with far more respect.”
The Trump administration is pushing for expanded offshore oil leasing beyond Cook Inlet. The administration’s proposed five-year leasing plan calls for 21 lease sales in waters around the state, including remote sites like the Bering Strait region.
The creation of the Minerals Management Administration in July is also part of the administration’s push for more offshore development.
It reverses an action taken during the Obama administration in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. In that event, a well blowout killed 11 people and spewed what became the nation’s biggest marine oil spill in history.
The Obama administration split the Minerals Management Service into two agencies to separate the leasing and revenue-generating functions from the environmental oversight functions and thus reduce conflicts of interest. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management became the agency in charge of leasing, while the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had the oversight duties.
A July 10 order issued by U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reunited the agencies to “streamline governance of the Nation’s offshore energy and mineral resources.”
Hilcorp and other companies continue to operate in state territory in the Cook Inlet basin, both offshore and onshore. The basin, which also includes a small amount of onshore federal territory, is the oldest oil and gas producing region in Alaska. The basin has produced oil since the 1950s and natural gas since the early 1960s, but volumes have diminished dramatically from what they were during peak production decades ago.
This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has been reporting on Alaska news ever since, covering stories ranging from oil spills to sled-dog races. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. She covers environmental issues, energy, climate change, natural resources, economic and business news, health, science and Arctic concerns — subjects with a lot of overlap. In her free time, she likes to ski and watch her son’s hockey games.
