The same president who passed the nation’s biggest law ever to slash climate pollution may have just undone part of that legacy.
The Biden administration gave the green light on Monday to one of the largest-ever oil projects on public lands. The approval clears the way for one of the world’s largest oil companies, ConocoPhillips, to start construction on the Willow project in northern Alaska in a matter of days. According to the Bureau of Land Management’s estimate, the project could produce up to 614 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years. Construction is likely to begin immediately, though it will take years for the oil to start flowing.
The approval marks the biggest about-face the president has made on his 2020 campaign pledge that he would be “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.”
The administration tried to cushion the blow for climate activists with other moves. Over the weekend, the Biden administration announced that it would protect 16 million acres from offshore and onshore drilling, while putting forward new regulations for ecologically sensitive areas and animals like the caribou.
The Bureau of Land Management, which produced the 120-page record of decision for the approval of the ConocoPhillips project, also slightly shrank the proposal’s initial scope. Ultimately, just three of the five large sections in ConocoPhillips plans can be developed. ConocoPhillips also relinquished 68,000 acres of its existing leases to the federal government.
But anti-Willow Native advocates don’t see these concessions as adequate. “The true cost of the Willow project is to the land and to animals and people forced to breathe polluted air and drink polluted water,” said a statement from Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, an Indigenous grassroots group. “While out-of-state executives take in record profits, local residents are left to contend with the detrimental impacts of being surrounded by massive…
Read the full article here
