Biden administration signals support for oil drilling project
WASHINGTON >> The Biden administration took a key step toward approving a huge oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, angering environmental activists who said allowing it to go forward would make a mockery of President Joe Biden's climate change promise to end new oil leases.
The ConocoPhillips project, known as Willow and located in the National Petroleum ReserveAlaska, was initially approved under the Trump administration and was later supported by the Biden administration but was then was blocked by a judge who said the environmental review had not sufficiently considered its effects on climate change and wildlife.
On Friday, the Biden administration issued a new environmental analysis.
In that analysis, the Department of the Interior said the multibillion-dollar plan would at its peak produce more than 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day and would emit at least 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime from the burning of the oil produced, as well as from construction and drilling activity at the site.
The oil company's plan calls for five drill sites, a processing facility, hundreds of miles of pipelines, nearly 40 miles of new gravel roads, seven bridges, an airstrip and a gravel mine in a region that is home to polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. Project opponents have argued that the development would harm wildlife and produce dangerous new levels of greenhouse gases.
In a statement, the Interior Department said the new analysis included several options, including a reduction in the number of drilling sites as well as an option for “no action” — or no drilling at all — and did not represent a final decision on the Willow project. The agency will take comments from the public for 45 days and is likely to make a final decision later this year.
Yet just by issuing the analysis, the Biden administration signaled its support for the project, opponents said. Willow is a priority for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a moderate who is frequently the most likely senator to break with her party and support Democratic appointees and some policy compromises.
Murkowski, in a statement, welcomed the move, calling it a “major announcement” and adding that she planned to hold the administration “accountable to their commitment to see this additional environmental review through so that construction can begin this winter.”