The Kaktovik Lagoon and the Brooks Range mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are seen in Kaktovik, Alaska, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
An Alaska development agency is seeking bids from companies to prepare for seismic testing that could one day lead to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is looking for a company to provide permitting support for a multiyear program to collect three-dimensional seismic data in the refuge’s coastal plain, according to newly released bid materials.
The agency owns seven, 10-year leases in the coastal plain, covering more than 350,000 acres. It purchased the leases during the first Trump administration in 2020, in hopes of partnering with oil exploration companies in the future.
The agency had previously attempted to conduct seismic work in the refuge. But that effort didn’t materialize. The Biden administration canceled the agency’s leases in 2023, though a judge this spring ruled that the cancellation was illegal.
The 19.6-million-acre area for decades has been a battleground for pro-development advocates, including Alaska’s congressional delegation and North Slope leaders — who say an oil discovery will help the economy and national security — and conservation and some Indigenous groups, who fear it will threaten polar bears as well as caribou hunted for subsistence and add to climate pollution.
Three-dimensional seismic testing has not been conducted in the reserve.
Such data would provide greater clarity on the potentially large underground oil resources, compared to two-dimensional tests conducted in the 1980s under a special program approved by Congress.
The move by the development agency comes after Republicans this month approved Trump’s massive tax and spending bill that calls for oil activity in the refuge to fall under rules established in the Trump administration instead of stricter guidelines established in the Biden era.
Randy Ruaro, executive director of the state agency, said in an interview Wednesday that the agency is “pretty positive” the seismic activity will take place this time.
The agency would like to see the work start this winter, he said. But the timing is uncertain.
“It’s going to depend somewhat on what the permitting agencies are requiring,” he said.
“It will also depend on the size and scope of our program, as well,” he said.
The bid materials do not propose the number of acres to be shot with seismic waves.
The request for proposals says the “work involves pre-development permitting services” to “ensure compliance with all regulatory obligations and to enable responsible exploration activities through careful planning, data collection, and coordination with key stakeholders.”
Bid documents show the one-year contract, with three potential one-year extensions, will exceed $1 million. The request for bids opened last week and closes for submissions Monday.
The pre-development permitting work would support items such as stakeholder outreach, a phased seismic acquisition program and the processing and interpretation of the seismic data, the agency’s proposed statement of services says.
Ruaro said the submissions period is short in part because there are not many companies that conduct seismic work in Alaska. The agency might see bids from SAExploration and ASRC Energy, he said.
The agency in 2021 selected SAExploration for pre-development and permitting work as well as field work, with spending allowed up to $1.5 million, but that contract expired in 2022.
Ruaro said additional spending is needed to update the permitting work previously done by SAExploration.
SAExploration Holdings, based in Houston, Texas, has a troubled past. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 and 2024 issued judgments against former executives with the company for their role in accounting fraud and theft that included inflating the revenue of SAE by approximately $100 million.
SAExploration said in a statement in 2020 that the executives had hidden their fraud from the board and that they had been removed for their misconduct. The Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged the remedial steps and cooperation by the company to address the wrongdoing as part of a 2020 consent agreement.
The Alaska Wilderness League this week criticized the state agency’s new effort to prepare for seismic work in a statement.
The group said the agency is gambling public money to send bulldozers and large trucks into the refuge to conduct the work. It said seismic activity would use heavy machinery that could scar the tundra for decades and threaten polar bear dens. The work could lead to possible oil development, with roads, runways and pipelines built in the refuge, the group said.
“This is worse than a public land sell-off — this is immediate, on the ground destruction,” said Kristen Miller, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League.
The level of industry interest in the refuge so far has been muted, but that could change if seismic data suggests there are big discoveries to be made.
The federal government has held two lease sales in the refuge, approved by Republicans in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. But the sales have garnered zero bids from major companies, the state agency was the dominant bidder. That has led to speculation that oil companies are wary of working in the refuge after decades of vehement opposition to drilling there.
Still, the coastal plain could contain lots of oil. It’s estimated to hold 7.7 billion barrels of “technically recoverable oil” on federal lands alone, slightly more than all the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2024, the Congressional Research Service has reported.
The U.S. Geological Survey has said the area could contain pools of oil with hundreds of millions barrels each, comparable to large discoveries made over the last decade in Alaska, far west of the refuge.
Ruaro said the agency thinks that geologic trends that have led to recent, sizable discoveries elsewhere on Alaska’s North Slope extend to the refuge as well.
Bill Armstrong, a leading North Slope explorer, as well as two publicly traded oil companies have announced a discovery they’ve made near the refuge, to the west.