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Monday, March 13, 2023
The U.S. Department of the Interior has approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil drilling project in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska. The project includes three drill sites of the five requested and relinquishes 68,000 acres of existing land leases within the Bear Tooth Unit. The project has been controversial and has gone through two different presidential administrations since its development began in 2018. Opponents of the project state that it would have a damaging impact on public lands and the climate. The project is supported by Alaska Native leaders as well as Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation.
The Department of the Interior released a Record of Decision on Monday that reduced the proposed size of the project. The approved project includes three drill sites and denies permits for two. As part of the agreement, ConocoPhillips will also relinquish 68,000 acres of existing land leases within the Bear Tooth Unit, located in the northeast portion of the NPR-A.
One of Biden’s campaign promises was “no more drilling, including offshore.” In January of 2021 Biden signed an executive order that paused “new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.” In June of that year, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty granted a preliminary injunction blocking the administration’s pause. Then in August of 2022 the same judge made the injunction permanent, stating the administration lacks “the authority to implement a Stop of lease sales.”
Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative Mike Scott said the Willow project “would have a devastating effect on public lands and our climate, and approving it after passing the largest climate bill in history would be a giant step in reverse.” Scott was referring to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). According to a memo from the Sierra Club, the IRA is a deal to “advance historic investments in climate, care, jobs, and justice.” However, the IRA requires the U.S. Department of Interior to lease 60 million acres offshore and 2 million acres of federal lands each year for oil and gas development. The combination of mandated lease quotas and Judge Doughty’s ruling prevent President Biden from fulfilling his campaign promise of ending new oil and gas drilling.
The Willow project is supported by Alaska Native leaders, who see it as economically critical for indigenous communities. All of Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation support the proposal. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters in a briefing that the Biden administration “damn well better not kill the project, period.” On February 20 the Alaska House of Representatives voted unanimously (36-0) on House Joint Resolution 6 in support of the project. Alaska Representative Dan Sullivan said the project would be “one of the biggest, most important resource development projects in our state’s history.”
Development projects which use federal land are required by law to assess no only the impacts on the physical environment, but also impacts on the cultural and human environments. The assessment is published as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and in the case of the Willow project, published by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
BLM released its final EIS on August 15, 2020. The same day the Audubon Society published a joint press release that stated, in part; “Rather than listening to local communities and taking the necessary time to produce an adequate analysis, the Trump Administration is rushing ahead to meet ConocoPhillips’ timeline — driven by their desire to have rubber-stamped permits in hand before a potential administration change.”
The Trump administration released a Record of Decision on October 26, 2020, authorizing up to three drill sites and supporting infrastructure such as processing and support facilities, gravel access roads, additional pipe lines, etc. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt said the approval “will make a significant contribution to keeping oil flowing down the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline decades into the future while delivering federal and state revenue as well as important impact assistance to the affected native communities.”
On February 13, 2021 a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary injunction pending appeal, preventing gravel road building, surface mining, and blasting as it relates to the Willow project.
On August 18, 2021 U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage vacated permits for the Willow project, effectively reversing the Trump administration’s approval. The District Court found the Final EIS was deficient in the following:
- It improperly excluded analysis of foreign greenhouse gas emissions
- It improperly screened out alternatives from detailed analysis based on BLM’s misunderstanding of leaseholders rights (i.e., that leases purportedly afforded the right to extract “all possible” oil and gas from each lease tract), and
- BLM failed to give due consideration to the requirement in the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act (NPRPA) to afford “maximum protection” to surface values in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area (TLSA)
This reversal prompted BLM to revise its Impact Statement in order “to address deficiencies identified by the court decision, and to ensure compliance with applicable law.” A Supplemental EIS (SEIS) was published in January of 2023.
According to the March 13, 2023 Record of Decision, the revised project “requires the fewest ice roads, fewest total miles of infield pipelines, least water use, fewest vehicle trips, fewest fixed-wing aircraft trips, fewest helicopter trips, and fewest acres of screeding.”
In response to the March 13 announcement, Senator Murkowski tweeted “I’m so relieved that an economically viable Willow Project is being reapproved. What a huge and needed victory for all Alaska.”
Some of the anticipated impacts of the project include the loss of approximately 532 acres of wetlands, the use of approximately 1,478.7 million gallons of freshwater, and the production of approximately 278,036 Mt of gross CO2e over 30 years.
The estimated cost to develop and produce the initial Environmental Impact Statement is $6,971,120. The estimated cost to develop and produce the SEIS is $3,685,000. This makes the total cost of the impact statement $10,656,120.