Lawsuit over Arctic offshore oil prospect says resurrection of leases was illegal

Environmental and Alaska Native groups have sued the Trump administration over a U.S. Department of the Interior decision to revive oil leases that were terminated in 2024 for lack of progress in bringing a long-languishing offshore Arctic prospect into production. The Center for Biological Diversity and Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic filed the lawsuit, which concerns the Liberty prospect in the Beaufort Sea. The Liberty field, with approximately 150 million barrels of oil, was discovered by BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. in the 1990s. If developed, it would be the first producing oil field located entirely in federal offshore waters off Alaska’s coast. Various plans to develop Liberty were offered over the years by BP and subsequently Hilcorp, the field’s current operator, but were not carried out. The three leases that made up the Liberty field and the Liberty Unit itself cannot be resurrected, the groups said in their lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in U.S.

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