In November 2025, the federal government released its draft 11th OCS Five-Year Plan, proposing five new oil and gas lease sales in Lower Cook Inlet between 2027 and 2031. Nationwide, the plan would open approximately 1.27 billion acres of public waters to oil and gas development across the Pacific coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and nearly all of Alaska’s coastal waters.
In Alaska alone, the plan proposes 21 lease sales, from Southeast Alaska to the High Arctic — including five in Lower Cook Inlet. Many of these areas have seen little or no previous offshore oil and gas activity, intensifying pressure on sensitive ecosystems, fisheries, and the coastal communities that depend on them.
Although the existing 10th Five-Year Plan did not expire until 2029, it did not align with the Trump administration’s aggressively pro-oil agenda. BOEM discarded that plan and replaced it with a proposal that dramatically expands offshore leasing. Alaskans have consistently opposed this approach. When the last five-year plan was released, more than 99% of the approximately 93,000 public comments opposed offshore leasing, citing environmental risks and the importance of healthy coastal waters.
Cook Inlet has a long and tumultuous history of oil and gas extraction. The region is generally regarded as the birthplace of commercial oil and gas production in Alaska, with the discovery of oil at the Swanson River oil field in 1957 helping pave the way for Alaska statehood in 1959. Cook Inletkeeper was formed in 1995, in a direct response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Many people in our local communities still remember how oil traveled hundreds of miles from Prince William Sound, reaching the shorelines of Cook Inlet. Since then, even larger spills have occurred. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster released nearly twenty times more oil than the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Despite these warnings, oil drilling in Cook Inlet has continued. Most recently, the federal government announced the completion of Lease Sale 258, six additional lease sales mandated by the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” and five more under the new Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Five-Year Plan. The risk of an oil spill increases with the amount of extraction taking place, and the tidal wave of new lease sales planned over the next seven years pushes Cook Inlet into truly dangerous territory.
Oceanographers at the Current Lab modeled how oil would spread if released near the areas proposed for new leasing under the five-year plan. Their simulations show that currents and winds could transport oil throughout Cook Inlet within just three days, heavily impacting the inlet’s west coast. The model uses publicly available regional ocean circulation data and wind data from NOAA’s Global Forecast System.
There are important caveats. First, the model only simulates the first three days of a spill. Many real-world spills — including pipeline leaks and well blowouts like Deepwater Horizon — can last far longer, allowing oil to spread across much larger areas. Cook Inlet is particularly vulnerable because extreme weather, ice, and powerful tides can delay repairs for extended periods.
Second, while the modeled spill is described as “catastrophic,” it represents a release of 8.8 million gallons of oil. Exxon Valdez released approximately 11 million gallons, and Deepwater Horizon released more than 200 million gallons.
The risks of new offshore drilling are not only environmental — they are economic. Much of Cook Inlet’s annual income is tied to tourism, which depends on maintaining the region’s reputation as a pristine natural landscape. New oil platforms in some of the area’s most scenic and heavily visited locations could damage that brand even without a spill.
A spill would be devastating. Cook Inlet’s salmon and marine ecosystems support sport and commercial fishing, subsistence harvesting, and tourism. Bear viewing alone generates $34.5 million in annual revenue in Lower Cook Inlet and $10 million in annual wages across Southcentral Alaska. The seafood industry directly employs 11,600 workers in Southcentral Alaska, not including additional income earned by residents fishing in other regions of the state.
Subsistence communities would be especially hard hit. In many communities, subsistence harvests provide more than 90% of household food.
The new OCS Five-Year Plan also reflects a troubling trend: the use of bureaucratic and congressional loopholes to reduce public input and weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process. The plan was released during Thanksgiving week, with a 60-day comment period spanning the holidays and closing January 23, 2026.
At the same time, federal risk analysis has serious flaws. Agencies rely on oil spill rate statistics from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which are largely based on data from the Gulf of Mexico. Those conditions bear little resemblance to Cook Inlet, with its cold waters, extreme tides, ice floes, and severe weather. And Alaska has better data available. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation maintains a spill database documenting approximately 12,000 drilling-related spills in Cook Inlet between 1995 and 2020. Yet recent BOEM environmental impact statements — including those for Lease Sale 258 — did not fully account for this history or for additive risk.
Based on recent spill rates, Lease Sale 258 alone carries an estimated 19% risk of a major spill. When Lease Sale 244 is added, that risk rises to 40%. When all existing and proposed drilling is considered together, the probability of at least one major spill exceeds 70%.
The more drilling that happens, the more risk we take on.
All of this can feel overwhelming — but there is something you can do. The proposed five-year plan affects federal waters, and the current public comment period may be the only meaningful opportunity for public input.
Inletkeeper is encouraging all U.S. citizens to submit comments before the January 23 deadline. More information about the issue, how to comment, and ways to get involved can be found at www.inletkeeper.org/act.
Cook Inlet is not expendable — and its future depends on public action now.