Justice Department Agrees to End Biden-Era Oil and Gas Leasing Restrictions in Alaska

The U.S. attorney general said the Biden administration’s restrictions violated federal law.

A part of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System runs past Alaska Range mountains, near Delta Junction, Alaska, on May 5, 2023. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Justice said July 7 the Biden administration’s oil and gas leasing restrictions in northern Alaska’s Arctic region violated federal law and asked the court to dismiss lawsuits by the state and its industrial development and export authority challenging the regulations.

The lawsuits were filed in 2025 over the Biden administration’s 2024 restrictions on oil and gas lease auctions in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Alaska argued that the administration essentially sabotaged bidding with its restrictions on surface use and occupancy, which made “any development economically and practically impossible.”

“The Biden era Alaska oil and gas leasing program violated the law and improperly limited Alaska’s energy potential with unreasonable regulation,” U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a July 7 press release.

“This settlement supports the Trump administration’s commitment to secure American energy independence and our national security for generations to come,” he added.

Congress set aside 1.5 million acres along the Alaska coast in 1980 for potential oil and gas development, and in 2017 instructed a federal agency to develop the resources on the land. Alaska’s lawsuit claims the Biden administration negated Congress’s directive.

“These resources not only help our energy independence as a nation but also grows the Alaska economy and puts more money in the Alaska Permanent Fund for future generations,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a January 2025 statement.

The settlement says the 2024 leasing program violated the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by abdicating the government’s duty to conduct a second lease sale, closing 75 percent of the 1.56 million-acre Coastal Plain to exploration and leasing, imposing unreasonable surface use restrictions on the remaining 25 percent, and unreasonably restricting surface disturbance.

“This settlement sets the record straight that the Biden administration’s 2024 restrictions on oil and gas production in Alaska were overly restrictive and contrary to Congress’s clear command to establish a competitive oil and gas leasing program in Alaska’s Coastal Plain,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement.

Alaska’s governor’s office and the industrial development and export authority didn’t immediately return requests for comment about the settlement.

The Justice Department also settled a decades-old lawsuit with Alaska on July 7 over a botched federal expansion project at the Don Young Port of Alaska in Anchorage, agreeing to pay the state $180 million.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy speaks at the White House in Washington on July 16, 2020. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The funds will go toward rebuilding the Don Young Port, according to Dunleavy.

The port serves about 90 percent of Alaska’s population with food, fuel, building materials, and other goods.