In 1923, President Warren G. Harding created the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, commonly called PET-4, in northern Alaska as a defense measure. In an era in which naval armaments around the world regularly appeared in newspaper headlines and the U.S. Navy was converting its ships to oil power, the President issued an Executive Order (E.O.) establishing PET-4, and noting that "the future supply of oil for the Navy is at all times a matter of national concern." He observed that "there are large seepages of petroleum along the Arctic Coast of Alaska," but existing laws to "promote development seem imperfectly applicable in the region because of its distance, difficulties, and large expense of development" (E.O. 3797-A, Feb. 27, 1923). The E.O. withdrew the lands from the application of the land and mineral laws for six years. Later the time limit was deleted. For more than half a century after that, the Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) explored the region for oil.

By the mid-1970's, the Navy's dependence on oil was dwarfed by that of the Nation's economy. The oil embargo of 1973 highlighted this need. There was also a rising environmental consciousness and interest in the variety and richness of wildlife and other values in PET-4. Consequently, President Gerald Ford signed the NPRPA to develop PET-4 and the other three Naval Petroleum Reserves, but to do so "in a manner consistent with the total energy needs of the Nation" (P.L. 94-258, Apr. 5, 1976).

The NPRPA authorized production of oil from the reserves in the contiguous 48 states. Two of the three petroleum reserves in these states are now extensively developed. For example, the Elk Hills, California reserve has produced over 1.1 billion barrels of oil, including 17.3 million in 2000, ranking it the eleventh largest producer in the U.S. outside Alaska (U.S. Crude Oil, Natural Gas, and Natural Gas Liquids Reserves: 2000 Annual Report, December 2001).

The law transferred management of PET-4 to the Secretary and renamed it the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The law prohibited petroleum production from NPR-A until authorized by Congress. In 1980, Congress granted that authorization and directed the Secretary to undertake "an expeditious program of competitive leasing of oil and gas" in the Reserve (P.L. 96-514, Dec. 12, 1980). The immediate outcome of the authorization was the series of lease sales held by BLM in the early 1980's.