On March 13, 2023, President Biden approved the Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, according to the Wall Street Journal. The region is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which is the nation’s largest piece of public land, the Washington Post reported. The region was first recognized by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and in 1976, it was designated specifically for oil and gas development by the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act. The law created special rules for oil and gas extraction and saved some areas for “maximum protection” of the environment. Today, the region is one of the most promising regions in the US for new oil and serves as a key habitat for polar bears, tens of thousands of migrating caribou, and waterfowl.
The project is expected to yield about 180,000 barrels of oil a day which is equivalent to about 40% of Alaska’s current crude production, Wall Street Journal stated.. Construction will go under way by the Houston based ConocoPhillips, costing about $7 billion. The Interior Department said it’d allow drilling on three of the five drill sites proposed by the company. According to the Washington Post, this allows the Interior Department to protect migratory routes for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd, which is important to the local Alaskan Native communities while respecting the decades old leases held by ConocoPhillips.
The Willow discovery was made back in 2017 and it pitted environmentalists against each other. Some denounced the project as a carbon bomb that’d impede President Biden’s campaign goals to phase out fossil fuels. Others argued in support that the project would generate jobs and revenue for Alaska. According to the Washington Post, many locals also voiced their concerns about the oil revenue. They’re worried that the project may harm local animal populations, lower the region’s air quality, and lead to spills, leaks, and blowouts that can occur with major oil development.
According to the Washington Post, The Bureau of Land Management has estimated that oil and gas extracted from its recommended version of the Willow project would generate more than 270 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the project’s 30 year lifetime. That amount of carbon dioxide is equivalent to driving 1.7 million gasoline-powered cars a year. Going forward with the project would create about 70 million metric tons of additional carbon dioxide in US emissions and another 60 million tons, internationally.
In an effort to quell criticism, the Biden administration announced a plan to block future oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean’s federal waters. Also, as a part of the approval, ConocoPhillips agreed to relinquish the rights to about 68,000 acres of its existing leasing in the National Petroleum Preserve. That also includes about 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.
According to the Washington Post, the project is on federal lands and requires federal permits to move forward. The public began to question Biden’s approval after his promises to end new oil drilling on federal land. Administration officials said those important issues influenced the project, but weren’t enough to stop it. They said they were limited by the law that governs the region and the leases that ConocoPhillips has held long before Biden took office. The law grants a company with such leases the right to develop and strong legal standing to fight the government if it tries to block their work. If ConocoPhillips’ plans were rejected, they could have sued, potentially won billions of dollars at the expense of taxpayers, and still been able to develop the project anyway, legal experts have said.
At a news conference, President Biden said, “My strong inclination was to disapprove of it across the board, but the advice I got from counsel was that if that were the case, we may very well lose in court.” He said, if the administration lost, the project may have gone forward without the conservation measures the Interior Department included in its final decision.
According to the Washington Post, on March 15, 2023, a coalition of environmental groups led by EarthJustice filed a lawsuit to overturn Biden’s decision, on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA, with the Natural Resources Defense Council as co-plaintiff.
“We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden administration committed to advancing,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney with EarthJustice.
