Key Takeaways
The U.S. Department of Interior announced a new oil and gas offshore lease plan that has 30 auctions in the Gulf of America (Mexico) through 2040 and six auctions in Alaska’s Cook Inlet through 2032.
The lease sales support President Trump’s energy dominance plan for the United States, increasing the ability to produce oil and natural gas.
The Trump administration’s plan is a major departure from the Biden administration’s leasing plan, which scheduled just three oil and gas lease sales — the minimum required by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The paltry number of lease sales in Biden’s plan was in-line with his record of leasing fewer federal acres for oil and gas than any president since World War II.
Instead, Biden gave lucrative subsidies and other incentives to wind and solar power, despite their inefficiency and high costs.
President Trump’s Interior Department released an offshore oil and gas leasing plan, outlining 30 auctions in the Gulf of America (Mexico) through 2040 and six auctions in Alaska’s Cook Inlet along Alaska’s south-central coast near Anchorage through 2032. The first sale in Alaska is to be held in March of 2026 and the first sale in the gulf is scheduled for December 10, which will be the start of the 30 required by March 2040. Beginning next year, there will be two sales in the gulf annually through 2039 and one in 2040. The lease sales are required by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The gulf accounts for 14-15% of U.S. oil production — about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day — supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, contributing tens of billions of dollars to the nation’s annual gross domestic product, and generating substantial federal and state tax revenue.
The plan is a significant departure from President Joe Biden’s lease plan that provided for a historically small number of lease auctions, even suggesting holding none in the original proposal. Biden’s final plan has just three lease sales, which were the minimum required by the Inflation Reduction Act. These sales were needed in order for his administration to conduct offshore wind lease sales, which it pursued aggressively despite the technology’s huge cost, intermittent output, and impact on the fishing industry. The paltry number of lease sales in Biden’s oil and gas lease plan continued his record of leasing fewer federal acres for oil and gas than any president since World War II.
Trump started correcting Biden’s legacy on oil drilling and leases sales on day one with his energy dominance plan. His team of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has been implementing Trump’s executive orders to make the United States energy dominant, reducing dependence on intermittent and weather-driven wind and solar energy. In June, the Trump White House announced a plan to open nearly 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to oil and gas development, which Biden had restricted. Biden had closed off 13 million acres of the NPR-A, which Congress established in 1923 as a petroleum reserve, and restricted 28 million acres of public lands in Alaska — nearly 7% of the state’s total land area — from oil, gas, or mineral extraction, among other negative actions to development of Alaska’s vast energy resources.
Development of Alaska’s oil resources is vital to the operation of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), which is currently running at less than 25% of its original capacity due to declining production on state lands at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the NPR-A would provide additional oil to TAPS. ANWR holds an estimated 4.3 to 11.8 billion barrels of oil and has vast natural gas resources. The 23-million-acre NPR-A is estimated to hold 895 million barrels of oil, although the estimates have changed over time depending on the management in place at the time of the assessment. A 1976 law requires the Interior Department to continue leasing in the NPR-A while protecting portions of the reserve that have wildlife, scenic or historical value, or areas used for subsistence.
Rather than securing energy dominance with fossil fuels, Biden provided massive subsidies to wind and solar power — technologies that dominated the capacity additions to the U.S. generating fleet during his term. These intermittent technologies only provide a fraction of the power that coal, natural gas, and nuclear generators provide. That is evidenced by them supplying less than 3% of U.S. energy demand in 2024, despite providing 16% of the country’s generation.
Besides phasing out subsidies for wind and solar by passage of the OBBBA, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins indicated the department “will no longer deploy programs to fund solar or wind projects on productive farmland, ending massive taxpayer handouts.” The agency is also putting restrictions on projects that receive funding through the Rural Energy for America Program, making large solar projects — those with a capacity of more than 50 kilowatts — ineligible. Wind and solar require much more land than fossil fuel generators and nuclear reactors, removing productive farmland that is needed for food production.
Furthermore, despite wind and solar having no fuel cost, they are not inexpensive. They require backup power from baseload plants or expensive batteries that store excess power to be used when the wind and solar units are not operating. Despite their true cost, Biden’s tax credits and other incentives for these favored technologies result in solar PV representing more than half of the planned capacity additions this year, with only 7% expected to be natural gas-fueled, and the rest to be composed of wind turbines and battery storage.
Analysis
By increasing the amount of lease sales off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of America, President Trump is ensuring that natural gas and oil producers will be able to take advantage of the U.S.’s vast natural resources. Access to these areas will place the U.S. in a firm position to ramp up production in the future, allowing domestic resources to meet growing demand for power from artificial intelligence and electrification, without raising prices for consumers.
Biden’s approach to offshore leasing showcased his opposition to expanding natural gas and oil production. When taken in tandem with his administration’s favoritism towards intermittent solar and wind generation, clearly, the Biden administration was putting the U.S. in a poor position to succeed as demand grows.
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