The Homer-based nonprofit organization Cook Inletkeeper has launched a petition calling for transparency in response to the Department of the Interior’s draft proposal for multiple offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Cook Inlet.
The 11th National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program’s five year plan proposes five new oil and gas lease sales in the Lower Cook Inlet between 2027 and 2031, opening almost every region of Alaska’s coastal waters for offshore oil and gas production.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is accepting public comments on the proposal now through Jan. 23, 2026. Inletkeeper Clean Water Lead Satchel Pondolfino said the decision to open the comment period during the holidays will hamper Alaskans’ ability to participate.
“The majority of this comment period falls during a time of year when people deservedly take a break to connect with friends, family and community,” Pondolfino said in a Nov. 24 press release. “The move to hold the comment period over the holidays will surely squeeze Alaskans’ ability to participate, and further demonstrates BOEM’s lack of commitment to the wellbeing of the local people impacted by its decision-making.”
According to a Nov. 20 press release from the Department of the Interior, a secretary order titled “Unleashing American Offshore Energy” directed BOEM to terminate the Biden-era National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program scheduled to end in 2029 and replace it with the “new, expansive” proposed plan in October 2026.
The plan proposes six oil and gas lease sales across the U.S. Pacific coast, seven in the Gulf of Mexico and 21 in Alaska, including five in the Cook Inlet. It would open every region of Alaska’s coastal waters with the exception of Bristol Bay, opening parts of the state that have never before been subjected to industrialization.
It’s the latest installment in a series of twelve lease sales planned for the Cook Inlet over the next seven years, which co-executive Inletkeeper director Loren Barrett described as twelve opportunities for industrialization to “carve up” the lower Cook Inlet while giving the public few chances to participate.
“This pile-up of overlapping lease authorities threatens the region’s fisheries, subsistence resources, wildlife, and coastal communities — and a major spill in these waters would be catastrophic,” Barrett wrote in Inletkeeper’s press release.
BOEM plans to finalize its supplemental environmental review by the end of 2025 without releasing a draft for any public hearings or community input. The decision to exclude the public is reminiscent of BOEM’s approval of Lease Sale 258 in 2022, when the agency approved the sale without adequately analyzing the risks to the Cook Inlet’s ecosystem. After Inletkeeper challenged BOEM in court, the agency was ordered to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement.
Inletkeeper has launched a petition urging BOEM to publicize that statement. According to a press release, the organization will also begin working with stakeholders to draft comments on the proposed five-year plan.
“All of these lease sales exploit bureaucratic and congressional loopholes that will reduce public input, and circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act process that is typically used in these lease sales,” Inletkeeper communications director Jamie Currie wrote in an email to the Clarion.
There is a comment period underway for affected local governments to weigh in on the Big Beautiful Bill’s mandate to hold at least six offshore oil and gas lease sales in Cook Inlet, one each year from 2026 to 2028, and again from 2030 to 2032. BOEM officials claim they do not require an environmental review through NEPA because the sales already have Congressional approval. The 60-day comment period ends Jan. 9, and no further public hearings or comment periods will be offered after.
“Now is the time for Alaskans and Americans to speak up for our energy future,” Barrett said. “If we stay silent now, we may not get the chance to speak again.”
The first of these proposed sales — known as “Big Beautiful Cook Inlet 1,” or BBC1 — is scheduled to take place in March 2026. For the entire schedule of lease sales planned, visit BOEM’s website.
