Environmental groups filed suit to stop ConocoPhillips’s Willow oil project in Alaska, which the Biden administration approved Monday against the opposition of green nongovernmental organizations and Democratic lawmakers, who argued it would worsen climate change.
Plaintiffs are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska to toss the record of decision from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management approving the project on the grounds that BLM failed to consider alternatives that could have reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
THE BATTLE OVER WILLOW DRILLING HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN
“This approval of an enormous new carbon source undermines President Biden’s promises to slash greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030 and transition the United States to clean energy,” said the groups, led by Earthjustice.
The administration signed off on Willow after years of intense lobbying and litigation around the project, which, as proposed, sought to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day on five drilling pads in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Interior and BLM approved a scaled-down version with three drilling pads. ConocoPhillips said the number was fewer than preferred but acceptable. The company has said an approval with fewer than three pads would make the project nonviable.
The Biden administration’s approval was the second such approval of Willow from the Bureau of Land Management. Under former President Donald Trump, BLM approved ConocoPhillips’s master development plan to construct five pads and related infrastructure, but a federal court sent the decision back to the bureau, finding it failed to adequately review the environmental impacts of the project.
Interior announced a supplemental environmental impact statement with its review of the project in February, which was effectively a redo of the Trump-era review. The SEIS set the stage for Monday’s record of decision approving the project.
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Environmental plaintiffs, in the new complaint, said the Biden administration failed to fix the errors from the Trump-era approval and that its alternative of three pads was insufficient to limit adverse impacts of the project.
“Despite the modifications, it would result in only a minor reduction of oil production and greenhouse gas emissions compared to the previously considered action alternatives,” the complaint said.
