The Biden administration on Monday gave the green light to a sprawling oil drilling project in Alaska, opening the nation’s largest expanse of untouched land to energy production.
The Interior Department noted in announcing the approval that it reduced the scope of the Willow Project by denying two of the five drill sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s largest crude oil producer. The multibillion project will be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and could produce nearly 600 million barrels of crude oil over the next 30 years, according to the department. The department estimated that the project could produce nearly a quarter of a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
The project had received forceful pushback from environmentalists, who pointed to its potential climate and environmental effects. The Native American community located closest to the site has also opposed the project, but the oil industry and Alaskan lawmakers had urged the president to approve the project for its energy production potential and its ability to create thousands of new jobs.
A source familiar with the decision said that the Biden administration had little choice in the matter, faced with the prospect of legal action and costly fines. Administration lawyers determined that the courts would not have allowed Biden to reject the project outright, as ConocoPhillips has long held leases on land in the petroleum reserve, and could have levied fines on the government, the source added.
The Interior Department announced Monday that ConocoPhillips would relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the petroleum reserve, most of which are close to the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, a major habitat for caribou and other wildlife that Native communities rely on. On Sunday, the Biden administration declared about 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean as indefinitely off limits for future oil and gas leasing.
On the campaign trail, Biden called for an end to drilling on federal lands.
In a news release, ConocoPhillips cheered the administration’s decision. “This was the right decision for Alaska and our nation,” said Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive officer.
But Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a champion of efforts to fight climate change, said the decision left an “oil stain” on the administration’s climate record.
“Approval of the Willow project is an environmental injustice,” Markey said in a statement. “The Biden administration’s decision to move forward with one of the largest oil development projects in decades sends the wrong message to our international partners, the climate and environmental justice movement, and young people who organized to get historic clean energy and climate investments into law last year.”
The Bureau of Land Management was required to review the proposed Willow Project after the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska found flaws with the Trump administration’s approval of a project with five drill pads.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
