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Uncovering the Controversial Reality Behind Alaska’s Willow Oil Project

by Ethan Kim
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The government recently gave approval to the Willow project, which is an oil project located in Alaska’s North Slope. This place is very rich with petroleum and supporters say this project will be beneficial to Indigenous communities living around that area. However, environmentalists argue that the Willow project goes against President Joe Biden’s main climate goals.

The company reported that the project could potentially produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s about 1.5% of all the oil production in America! This is also the biggest oil project being proposed on US public land today. Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska said this development could have one of the most significant impacts ever seen in our state’s history.

So far this year, about 500,000 barrels of oil have been pumped through the trans-Alaska pipeline every day. That’s a lot less than when it was at its highest point in the late-1980s which was 2.1 million barrels each day! ConocoPhillips Alaska had five drilling sites planned for the project, but the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) only approved three of them with a total of 199 wells. ConocoPhillips said they were happy with BLM’s decision.

The company agreed to give up their rights to 68,000 acres of National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where the Willow project is located. This means less freshwater would be used and the two drill sites won’t be built – no roads that are 11 miles long, pipelines that are 20 miles long or gravel areas 133 acres will be built either. All this limited construction reduces potential dangers for caribou migration and people who hunt in this area.

Using oil from Willow would create the same level of greenhouse gases as 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) over 30 years, which is the same amount of emissions from 1.7 million cars in that time period. Compared to ConocoPhillips’ plan, this approach would be 8% cleaner.

In Alaska, the Governor who’s a Republican, people in Congress and state representatives all agree on something.

Nagruk Harcharek, the president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat group, said that many people in North Slope support building a project called Willow. Supporters think it would be beneficial for the communities because the taxes generated by it can help with infrastructure and public services.

Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak from the city of Nuiqsut, which has 525 people living there, is against a proposed development mainly because she’s worried it could harm caribou and how her town gets its food. But not everyone in that area feels the same; in fact, the local Alaska Native village corporation even supports the development.

U.S. Representative Mary Peltola, who is also Yup’ik, said that today the people of Alaska were heard on a project they had been advocating for. Ahtuangaruak said that she felt like her voice was not being heard. This decision has an impact on politics in Alaska.

President Biden’s decision has made some Alaskan lawmakers angry. This is because environmental groups and many Democrats in Congress don’t agree with him, as this project does not help with reducing the level of global warming before 2030. Environmentalists also say that by approving this project, Biden has gone against a promise he made during his 2020 campaign which was to stop any new oil or gas drilling on federal lands. They had asked for the project to be rejected.

President Biden wants to lessen the U.S.’s reliance on oil, coal and gas, so he put a law in place to help promote clean energy sources like wind and solar. Some Republicans (people from the other party) accused him of causing higher gas prices because of something that happened with Ukraine.

In 2021, the Justice Department went to court to try and keep an environmental review approved by the Trump administration. Unfortunately, a judge said they weren’t thorough enough and sent it back for further work. After that, last month a new review was released which paved the way for the announcement made on Monday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska said the decision will both bring jobs and money to Alaska and provide important resources to the US and other countries. She also thanked the government for listening to Alaskan people about how this decision can help with energy production and make the country more secure.

Donald Trump’s government team said that if they increased oil drilling in Canada, it would reduce the amount of petroleum we need to buy from other countries. They said this was because companies here have stricter rules about protecting the environment than other countries.

But scientists didn’t believe them, and a judge agreed. So, the Interior Department changed their calculations about how much pollution they thought oil drilling would cause.

The Biden administration recently made a decision about something called Willow’s net emissions, but there was pushback over the plan because it would have required planting trees on national forests to absorb and store carbon dioxide. The reforestation proposal was dropped from the final decision because it’s something that the administration wanted to do anyway in order to meet its climate goals.

The Willow project is about producing oil when the United States needs to reduce their reliance on it. Michael Lazarus from the Stockholm Environment Institute explains that science does not change no matter what political pressure the government is facing. President Biden has suspended lease sales for oil and gas exploration and promised to reorganize the way the country deals with fossil fuels.

Lawyers from states that produce oil got a federal judge to allow them to lease certain areas. But then an appeals court rejected the ruling. To stop this process, the government agreed to sell tens of millions of acres onshore and offshore for leasing before it allowed any leases for renewable energy.

In Biden’s first year as President of the United States, companies got a lot more drilling permits than usual, like they were stocking up on them. Approvals then went way down in 2022. The Biden administration has not let companies lease very many areas though and some people think it isn’t enough.

A decision on Willow was signed by someone called Tommy Beaudreau, who used to live in Alaska and explained it to other people. The person in charge of this decision is Deb Haaland, but she wasn’t talking about it because when she lived in New Mexico she used to oppose it. The Biden Administration is doing something else as well.

This Sunday, the government announced that President Biden will be keeping forever 3 million acres of the Arctic Ocean off limits to any oil and gas mining. This area also provides a great home for whales, seals, polar bears and other wildlife. The White House made a statement saying the ocean area should stay protected so the animals can have a nice home forever.

The government’s action will help protect the whole area around the Beaufort Sea. This builds on a plan from President Barack Obama in 2016, when he chose to keep people away from the Chukchi Sea and most of the Beaufort Sea. The White House announced this news.

The Biden Administration is looking into how to protect the over 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) inside the petroleum reserve, which have special features like wildlife, places for people to live, beautiful scenery and more. People are going to be able to leave comments about it in a few months.

The Interior Department decided that out of the 23 million acres (9.3 million hectares) in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, only 11.8 million acres (4.8 million hectares) can be used for oil and gas leasing. The remaining 11 million acres (4.5 million hectares) are off-limits to oil companies. This special reserve exists on Alaska’s North Slope and was built a hundred years ago for future oil production.

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