Biden will approve Alaska oil project, with protections

The Biden administration will approve one of the largest oil developments ever on federal land Monday, according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations, a day after announcing sweeping protections for more than 16 million acres of land and water in Alaska.

Opponents hoped President Joe Biden would reject energy giant ConocoPhillips’s multibilliondollar drilling project, called Willow, on Alaska’s North Slope. But facing the prospect of having such a decision overturned in court, the administration plans to let the oil company build just three pads in the National Petroleum ReserveAlaska (NPR-A), the nation’s largest expanse of public land, these two individuals said.

The decision shrinks the project from the five pads that ConocoPhillips originally proposed, but allows what company officials have described as a site large enough for them to move forward and start construction within days.

Seeking to offset concern about the development, Mr. Biden will also declare the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil and gas leasing, the Interior Department announced Sunday. The department will also write new regulations protecting nearly 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s largest piece of public land, including ecologically sensitive areas that provide habitat for thousands of caribou and shorebirds.

Mr. Biden’s effort to close off the spigot to future drilling in the region, even as he prepares to approve an operation that could produce between 576 million and 614 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years, highlights the challenge the president faces in delivering on his much-touted climate goals.

U.S.: Iran’s prisoner swap claim ‘cruel lie’

Iran’s top diplomat claimed Sunday that a prisoner swap was near with the U.S., though he offered no evidence to support his assertion. The U.S. immediately dismissed his comments as a “cruel lie.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has made similar comments in the past about possible deals with the U.S. on frozen assets abroad and other issues that never came to fruition. Some of those remarks have appeared aimed at shoring up domestic support amid the mass protests challenging Iran’s theocracy and supporting the country’s troubled rial currency.

However, in an interview Sunday with Iranian state television, Mr. Amirabdollahian claimed that Iran had “reached an agreement in recent days regarding the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States.”

“If everything goes well on the American’s side, I think we will see the exchange of prisoners in the short term,” he added. He alleged a document between Iran and the U.S. laying out the exchange had been “indirectly signed and approved” since March 2022.

Reached by The Associated Press, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called the comments “another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families.”

“We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,” Mr. Price said. “We will not stop until they are reunited with their loved ones.”

Iran long has taken prisoners with Western passports or ties to use in negotiations with foreign nations.

North Korea launches 2 missiles from sub

North Korea said Monday it test-fired two cruise missiles from a submarine off its east coast, the latest in the country’s series of weapons tests.

The test on Sunday came a day before the U.S. and South Korean militaries begin largescale joint military drills that North Korea views as a rehearsal for invasion.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Monday that the missile launches were meant to confirm the reliability of the weapons system and gauge underwater-to-surface offensive operations of the country’s submarine units.

The missile tests show the North’s resolve to respond with “overwhelming powerful forces” to “the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces,” which the news agency said ”are getting evermore undisguised in their anti(North Korea) military maneuvers.”