Joe Biden's administration plans to set aside hundreds of thousands of acres off the Alaskan coast for new oil and gas drilling next month, Bloomberg reports.

More than 958,000 acres in Cook Inlet, Alaska, will be auctioned off. The development could presumably produce nearly 200 million barrels of crude oil and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas over the life of the lease sales.

News of the sale, which includes federal waters stretching roughly from Calgin Island in the north to Augustine Island in the south, has sparked outrage from environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity. The nonprofit organization said the activity would harm one of the world's endangered whale populations, the Cook Inlet beluga, as well as other species.