The Biden administration signed off on a large-scale oil project in rural Alaska, one of its most consequential resource decisions yet and one certain to devastate the environmental groups and congressional Democrats who advocated against the project.
The approval from the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management represents the culmination of years of lobbying around Willow, which, as proposed, sought to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day on five drilling pads.
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The record of decision, announced on Monday, approves a smaller version of the proposed project, giving ConocoPhillips three of the drilling pads it sought to develop.
With the denial of the two drill sites, ConocoPhillips relinquishes the rights to develop 68,000 acres of its existing leases, the department said.
Willow’s approval is coupled with new restrictions on oil and gas drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where the project is being developed. The administration will designate approximately 2.8 million acres in the Arctic Ocean near the NPR-A as indefinitely off-limits for future oil and gas leasing.
The Biden administration had already reduced the acreage available for development in the reserve.
“The actions will create an additional buffer from exploration and development activities near the calving grounds and migratory routes for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd, an important subsistence resource for nearby Alaska Native communities. They significantly scale-back the Willow Project within the constraints of valid existing rights under decades-old leases issued by prior Administrations,” Interior said in an announcement.
The Biden administration faced competing pressures with Willow between balancing its climate change agenda and pressure to limit the expansion of fossil fuels with legal obligations under federal laws governing resource development on public lands.
President Joe Biden has also sought more oil production from the industry, including from operators holding leases on federal lands, in response to higher retail fuel prices. It contrasts with some of Biden’s messaging from his presidential campaign, during which he promised to restrict drilling and leasing on federal lands.
Ryan Lance, the chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, said the company’s plans for developing Willow are in accordance with Biden’s repeated calls targeted specifically at large integrated energy companies for more oil production to bring down prices.
“It’s exactly what this administration has been asking our industry to do, lean in, produce more [oil],” Lance said Tuesday during remarks at CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual industry conference in Houston.
Environmental groups implored the Biden administration to block Willow, which would be the largest single fossil fuel development project on federal lands, to prevent additional oil production and greenhouse gas emissions.
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“BLM cannot dismiss the significance of these emissions on the basis that they are a small fraction of global emissions, which is true for any single project, because it ignores the global nature of the problem posed by climate change,” Earthjustice, an environmental nongovernmental organization, said in comments to the Bureau of Land Management’s draft environmental review of the project.
Alaska’s congressional delegation strongly supported the project, as did many of the Alaska Native organizations that stand to benefit from the economic windfall associated with additional oil development.
