The Biden administration has approved the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, angering climate advocates and setting the stage for a court challenge, CNN reports.
The Willow Oil drilling Project is a decades long oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve, which is owned by the federal government. The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil, though that oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.
By the administration’s own estimates, the project would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads, according to CNN.
The approval is a victory for Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region.
Environmental advocates are expected to challenge the project in court. Earthjustice, an environmental law group, has been preparing a case against the project and intends to argue the Biden administration’s authority to protect resources on Alaska’s public lands includes taking steps to reduce planet-warming carbon pollution, which the Willow Project would ultimately add to.
Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen blasted the administration’s decision on Monday.
“We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden Administration committed to advancing,” Dillen said. “We know President Biden understands the existential threat of climate, but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals.”
The venture was approved with three drilling pads instead of two. In recent weeks, the Biden administration had looked at reducing the number of approved drilling pads down to two and boosting nature conservation measures to try to assuage concerns climate and environmental groups had about the Willow oil drilling project.
But ConocoPhillips and Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation aggressively lobbied the Biden White House and Interior Department for months to approve three drilling pads, saying the project would not be economically viable with two.
Many oil drilling leases on the site were decades-oil, which the administration felt gave ConocoPhillips certain existing legal rights. Reducing the drill-pads to two would have allowed the company to drill about 70% of the oil they were initially seeking.
Still, the final scope of the project will cover 68,000 fewer acres than what ConocoPhillips was initially seeking, the sources said.
Biden on Monday is also expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska in tandem with Willow approval.
Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling. In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.
The protections will extend to the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay special areas – places that are important habitat to grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. On Sunday, an administration official said the administration views the new actions as a “firewall” against both future fossil fuel leasing and expansion of existing projects on the North Slope.