Haaland takes heat for ‘Willow’
Climate groups wanted Interior secretary to block project
WASHINGTON — In early March, President Joe Biden met with members of Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation as they implored him to approve a contentious oil drilling project in their state. Around the same time, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland held a very different meeting on the same topic.
Gathering at Interior headquarters a half-mile from the White House, leaders of major environmental organizations and Indigenous groups pleaded with Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member, to use her authority to block the Willow oil project. Environmental groups call the project a “carbon bomb” that would betray pledges made by Biden — and Haaland — to fight climate change and have mounted a social media #Stopwillow campaign that has been seen hundreds of millions of times.
The closed-door meeting, which was described by two participants who insisted on not being identified because of its confidential nature, grew emotional as participants urged Haaland to oppose a project many believed Biden appeared likely to approve even as it contradicted his agenda to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
Haaland, who opposed Willow when she served in Congress, choked up as she explained that the Interior Department had to make difficult choices, according to the participants. Many Native groups in Alaska support Willow as a job creator and economic lifeline.
Less than two weeks later, the Biden administration announced it was approving Willow, an $8 billion drilling plan by Conocophillips on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope.
Haaland, who had not publicly commented on Willow in two years as head of the U.S. agency overseeing the project, was not involved in the announcement and did not sign the approval order, leaving that to her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau.
In an online video released Monday night, 10 hours after the decision was made public, Haaland said she and Biden, both Democrats, believe the climate crisis “is the most urgent issue of our lifetime.”
She called Willow “a difficult and complex issue that was inherited” from previous administrations and noted that Conocophillips has long held leases to drill for oil on the site, in the National Petroleum Reserve-alaska.
“As a result, we have limited decision space,” she said, adding that officials focused on reducing the project’s footprint and minimizing impacts to people and wildlife. The final approval reflects a substantially smaller project than Conocophillips originally proposed and includes a pledge by the Houston-based oil company to relinquish nearly 70,000 acres of leased land that will no longer be developed, she said.
The video had received more than 100,000 views by Friday.
Haaland declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement, the department said Haaland had been “actively involved” in the Willow decision from the start and met with Alaska Natives on both sides of the issue, conservation and other groups and members of Congress.
Dallas Goldtooth, a senior strategist for the Indigenous Environmental Network, called it “problematic” that Haaland’s video was the Biden administration’s primary voice on Willow. Biden himself has not spoken publicly on the project.