HJRES131

H.J.Res. 131 became Public Law 119-52 on December 11, 2025. It disapproves the Bureau of Land Management's 2024 Record of Decision for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program, which had placed approximately 1.2 million acres off-limits for leasing and exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The law reinstates the 2020 ROD that opened the entire 1.6 million-acre program area to leasing. This is a regulatory rollback accomplished through the Congressional Review Act; it does not mandate any new activity. This is an authorization of policy, not an appropriation. The law itself contains no funding. Actual drilling on the coastal plain, if it occurs, will require companies to acquire leases (through a future BLM lease sale), secure permits, and deploy capital. Those future steps are subject to additional environmental review, litigation, and market conditions. No public company has announced a current leasehold or intent to drill in the ANWR coastal plain during 2025-2026. The 2020 lease sale resulted in only two bidders (Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native corporation, and a small exploration firm Knik Arm Services) who surrendered their leases later. The major oil and gas companies—$XOM, $CVX, $COP—have not prioritized this region given high infrastructure costs, complex permitting, and lower-cost inventory elsewhere. Because the law does not fund projects, create new credits, or impact any existing revenue streams of publicly traded companies, there is no measurable near-term revenue impact across the listed SEC filers. The structural change is permissive — it removes a barrier to future leasing — but does not compel activity. Market reaction has been negligible.