Willow project

Today, the Interior Department issued a Record of Decision regarding the proposed Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska ...

The President and the Biden-Harris administration continue to deliver on the most aggressive climate agenda in American history, including the creation of clean energy manufacturing and jobs. District Court for the District of Alaska in its August 2021 vacatur of the previous administration’s approval of a project with five drill pads. The proposed rule, which will be available for public comment in the coming months, will consider additional protections for the more than 13 million acres designated as Special Areas in recognition of their importance to wildlife and subsistence uses. The proposed rulemaking would help protect subsistence uses in the NPR-A, responding to Alaska Native communities who have relied on the land, water, and wildlife to support their way of life for thousands of years. The company will also relinquish rights to approximately 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the NPR-A, including approximately 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area. The Record of Decision denies two of the five drill site pads proposed by ConocoPhillips, reducing the project’s drill pads by 40 percent.

Download .PDF HOUSTON – ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) welcomes the Department of the Interior's Record of Decision (ROD) on the Willow project, adopting the ...

Where, in any forward-looking statement, the company expresses an expectation or belief as to future results, such expectation or belief is expressed in good faith and believed to be reasonable at the time such forward-looking statement is made. Located in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), the Willow project is estimated to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak, decreasing American dependence on foreign energy supplies. After nearly five years of rigorous regulatory and environmental review, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process is complete. Forward-looking statements relate to future events, plans and anticipated results of operations, business strategies, and other aspects of our operations or operating results. “We also thank our employees and the contractor community, who dedicated years to designing a project that will provide reliable energy while adhering to the highest environmental standards.” “This was the right decision for Alaska and our nation,” said Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive officer.

Drilling for more oil in the Alaskan Arctic would be, in the President's own words, a “big disaster.”

“In giving the greenlight to drilling, President Biden is now risking the support of many young people who voted for him in large numbers in 2020,” the BBC noted. An immense new oil project—Willow is expected to include more than two hundred wells—is obviously at odds with the goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. [Barack Obama](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/barack-obama)’s all-of-the-above energy strategy?) And it’s the reason that, even as the country takes steps to reduce emissions, it never seems to really get anywhere. The decision to approve the Willow project is—to use the President’s words—“a big disaster.” This is not just because of the impact that the project will have, though certainly that is bad enough. In the form in which it was approved on Monday, the Willow project will produce roughly five hundred and seventy-five million barrels of oil in the course of the next thirty years. In an opinion piece published on CNN’s Web site last week, all the members of Alaska’s congressional delegation—two Republican senators and a Democratic representative—expressed their support for the project. Of course, for those who oppose the project, the politics play differently. [Inflation Reduction Act](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-democrats-finally-deliver), which contained both billions of dollars’ worth of tax credits to speed the transition away from fossil fuels and a stipulation that millions of acres of federal land be auctioned off for oil and gas drilling to provide more fossil fuels. On Monday, the Biden Administration granted ConocoPhillips approval for an immense new drilling project—the Willow oil project—in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Biden, in response, pledged, “No more drilling on federal lands, period, period, period.” It was, he added, “a disaster” to drill for oil in the Arctic—“a big disaster, in my view.” As the Times pointed out, the Willow project “would be one of the few oil projects that Mr. By the Administration’s own estimates, burning all that oil will result in the emission of about ten million tons of carbon dioxide per year, or some three hundred million tons over the life of the project.

The Biden administration is approving a scaled-back version of ConocoPhillips' $7 billion oil and gas drilling Willow project in Alaska, the U.S. Department ...

Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska said the congressional delegation is expecting an imminent legal challenge and is preparing an amicus brief to defend the project. "The state of Alaska cannot carry the burden of solving our global warming issues alone." ConocoPhillips had sought to build up to five drill sites and project infrastructure including dozens of miles of roads and pipelines and seven bridges. Alaska's elected officials say the project will create hundreds of jobs and bring billions of dollars in revenue to state and federal coffers. "I feel the people of Alaska have been heard," U.S. [The decision](/world/us/biden-plans-limits-oil-drilling-alaska-arctic-circle-ap-2023-03-12/) follows an aggressive eleventh-hour campaign from opponents who had argued the development of the three drill sites in northwestern Alaska conflicts with President Joe Biden's highly publicized efforts to fight climate change and shift to cleaner sources of energy.