Federal privacy watchdog probing OpenAI, ChatGPT after complaint about popular bot

David Fraser, The Canadian Press

The federal privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into the company behind ChatGPT, an explosively popular artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

The watchdog's office announced Tuesday that it is initiating the investigation into U.S.-based company OpenAI because it received a complaint alleging "the collection, use and disclosure of personal information without consent."

Privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne said in a statement that artificial intelligence and its effects on privacy are a top priority, and his office must stay ahead of "fast-moving technological advances."

Dufresne's office said it won't release further details at this time, but its mandate is to publicly report on the results of investigations after they conclude.

ChatGPT, launched last November, uses written information already available on the internet to provide detailed, conversational responses to queries posed by users — and has been exploited to spit out everything from computer code to screenplays.

Microsoft is using similar, even more powerful technology from OpenAI to update its search engines and other products.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment about the privacy commissioner's investigation.

Prompted by The Canadian Press for its own response, the ChatGPT bot said that as an artificially intelligent language model, "I do not have access to the current responses or actions taken by the company running ChatGPT, OpenAI, regarding the investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada."

The bot's response said it is common for companies under investigation to cooperate with regulatory bodies and provide information as required by law.

"OpenAI may release a public statement regarding the investigation, or they may keep the matter private until the investigation is complete," it said. 

Critics have raised concerns about plagiarism, and last week, Italy's own privacy watchdog ordered a ban while it investigates a suspected breach of European data rules. 

Germany's commissioner for data protection recently told a German newspaper that the country may make the same move.

The 27 nations that make up the European Union are negotiating a law that would classify artificial intelligence programs and tools based on their perceived level of risk.

The "risks and opportunities" of artificial intelligence are also being discussed during a Tuesday meeting between President Joe Biden and his council of science and technology advisors. 

The White House says Biden will "discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards."

ChatGPT is also the source of a matter brought to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In a complaint made to the consumer protection body and posted on its website, a tech ethics group says ChatGPT is a risk to privacy and public safety. 

In its complaint, filed March 30, the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy said the OpenAI technology does not meet the trade commission's requirements that artificial intelligence be "transparent, explainable, fair and empirically sound while fostering accountability."

The complaint was filed shortly after a group of tech industry stars, including Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX mogul Elon Musk and Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, called in an open letter for a six-month pause to companies rolling out artificial intelligence technology. 

The letter, organized by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, said that in recent months there has been an "out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control." 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 4, 2023.

With files from The Associated Press.

Will Canada need to raise its retirement age?

Here's what a economist says

Daniel Johnson , BNN Bloomberg

Amid widespread protests in France over its government's plan to increase the age of retirement, one economist said it is unlikely that Canada will need to increase its retirement age.

While aging demographics present a challenge to businesses in Canada, the potential impact has been softened by immigration and people electing to work at increasingly advanced ages, James Orlando, the director of TD Economics, said in an interview with BNNBloomberg.ca last Thursday. 

“The fact that we have so many people coming in, we've done such a good job of attracting immigration, [that] has enabled us to be able to afford the supports to the older population of Canada,” Orlando said.

Additionally, there has been a substantial increase in people aged 60-70 years old choosing to work longer, due partly to changing incentives, he said.

“The fact that we've done things like eliminating the mandatory retirement age in certain provinces, the fact that we have a system in place where we've incentivized people to delay receiving things like Canadian Pension Plan benefits or even delaying Old Age Security benefits, that incentivizes people to not draw on [those benefits] but also work longer,” Orlando said. 

If these changes were not made, the federal government would have to allocate more money to support people that likely would have retired earlier, he said. 

As people live longer, Bill VanGorder, the chief operating officer and chief policy officer of Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), said in a phone interview with BNNBloomberg.ca on Friday that people are not automatically choosing to retire when they reach the age of 65.

“And they shouldn't be forced to [retire at 65] in fact, we need them to keep working, because there's a lack of employees right across the country,” VanGorder said.

Canada’s 2023 federal budget included a 10 per cent increase in Old Age Security (OAS) payments. 

VanGorder said that the 10 per cent increase was expected and that the budget had “very little in it for seniors” and was “very disappointing.”

The increase will be accessible to people over the age of 75, which is something VanGorder said he finds concerning.

“Once again, they're making a two-tiered system for old age people. People between [age] 65 and 75 are not eligible for it,” he said.

“Our feedback that we're getting from our members and other older Canadians across the country is that the pressures of the increased cost of living these days are actually hitting the younger people, age 65 to 75, more than the older group [age of 75 and older].”

VanGorder said the people in the younger age group are generally more active, while the older group often live more sedentary lives.

In the 2012 federal budget, then prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government planned to increase the minimum age to receive OAS support from 65 to 67 starting in 2023. 

In the 2016 budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals reversed that decision.  

Civil unrest began in France after President Emmanuel Macron moved to raise the minimum retirement age to 64 from 62 to bring the nation’s retirement age in line with other European countries. The two-year increase to the minimum retirement age is a necessary move, according to Macron, in order to address the country’s aging population and debt. 

FUNDING RETIREMENT 

Lisa Raitt, co-chair of Coalition for a Better Future, vice-chair of global investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets and former natural resources minister, said in an interview on March 29, that OAS payments and government-guaranteed income will cost about $60 billion this year. 

By 2027, Raitt said OAS costs will rise by around 50 per cent to $90 billion. She said there is not a “special trust” that currently exists to meet rising OAS costs and that funding will come from taxation. 

As Canadians age, Raitt said long-term care will become a significant issue that requires more attention. Germany and parts of the U.S. fund long-term care through a “payroll type tax,” she said, which is not something she advocates for. 

“It's just recognizing, we're going to have to have a separate fund to pay for that, and it can't always compete with people who want to have more money for the provision of services within a hospital,” Raitt said.

Orlando said the federal government will likely be able to continue to fund existing programs long-term, including retirement, as long as doing so doesn’t impact the federal government's fiscal anchor, the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. 

“For as long as debt to GDP is not increasing on an unsustainable path, then the ability for the government to be able to keep funding the programs they have in place is there,” he said. 

“So you're not having a day of reckoning where you have to make significant changes to your policy system for so long as you're able to make these ratios improve over time.” 

Rogers-Shaw sale means 'massacre' of layoffs coming: Anthony Lacavera

Holly McKenzie-Sutter, BNN Bloomberg

The founder of the wireless company now known as Freedom Mobile says the $20-billion Rogers-Shaw sale is a costly move that will likely lead to high prices for wireless customers and layoffs for telecom staff.

Anthony Lacavera, founder and chairman of Globalive, made the comments to BNN Bloomberg on Friday, after the federal government gave final approval to Rogers Communications Inc.’ proposed purchase of Shaw Communications Inc.

Lacavera predicted that layoffs will be the only way Rogers can finance the costly takeover.

“I know the business, and I know that the only way Rogers is going to finance this very expensive cable merger is we're going to see layoffs, as a nice way to put it. It's going to be a massacre,” Lacavera said in a television interview.

Rogers said it completed the sale on Monday.

As a condition of the sale’s federal approval, Rogers must create 3,000 jobs in Western Canada and maintain them for at least 10 years.

Shaw subsidiary Freedom Mobile, which was originally called Wind Mobile, was sold to Quebecor’s Videotron as another key condition of Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s approval of the sale, in an attempt to introduce a fourth wireless player in the Canadian market and improve competitiveness in the sector.

Lacavera said he does not expect Freedom Mobile to successfully compete, or bring down wireless prices at its competitors, because it is not independently owned.

He predicted that the cable and phone companies that own Canada’s wireless carriers will want to “defend their legacy business” and maintain high prices, and said the Rogers-Shaw approval has allowed that structure to continue.

“We’ve done nothing to solve the structural problem in Canada. In fact, we’ve gone in the other direction and allowed more consolidation to happen,” he said.

Lacavera also predicted that the conditions on the sale and associated financial penalties would be difficult to enforce.

BNNBloomberg.ca has reached out to Rogers for comment.

Rogers CEO turns to cost cuts and customers with megadeal finally done

Derek Decloet, Bloomberg News

Rogers Communications Inc. has finally gained control of Shaw Communications Inc., emerging from two years of legal battles, family intrigue and government lobbying to complete one of Canada’s biggest-ever corporate takeovers. Chief Executive Officer Tony Staffieri doesn’t want to look back. 

The tortuous path to getting the deal done was “longer than we would have expected,” Staffieri said in an interview. Now it’s time to move on — starting this week, when he’ll meet with Shaw staff in Calgary and Vancouver and begin combining the cable and internet providers with a goal of wringing out at least $1 billion (US$745 million) in costs.

“The sheer size always introduces complexity,” he said. “So it’s going to be about, how do we keep this simple and focused on the things that are going to matter most?”

His list of priorities includes integrating the two companies’ networks, spending billions to expand wireless coverage and 5G services and making it easy for customers of Shaw to do business with Rogers. 

Rogers unveiled its $20 billion friendly offer for Shaw in March 2021, uniting two billionaire families to create an enterprise that will be nearly as large as rival BCE Inc. The companies told investors they expected to close the deal by mid-2022, but it was delayed when Canada’s antitrust czar, Matthew Boswell, decided to wage a legal battle against it. He lost, and on Friday, the Canadian government gave approval, with conditions around jobs in Western Canada, network investment and consumer pricing. 

In the middle of that two-year period, Staffieri was fired as chief financial officer. 

He had been caught in a power struggle involving members of the Rogers family and Joe Natale, the CEO who put together the Shaw deal. The family feud wound up in court, where Edward Rogers, the son of the company’s late founder, gained control of the board, which then turfed Natale and brought Staffieri back in November 2021, this time as CEO. 

He’d been unemployed for less than two months. His first priority was clear: get the Shaw deal done. 

Staffieri took some criticism for his handling of the merger. In early 2022, the Canadian government made it clear that it wouldn’t allow Rogers to buy Shaw’s Freedom Mobile business because it would eliminate the No. 4 wireless provider in key markets, including Toronto and Vancouver. Divesting that business was the only option. But Rogers negotiated first with private equity players instead of Montreal-based Quebecor Inc., the largest and strongest of Canada’s regional wireless and cable companies. 

From the government’s point of view, Quebecor was the best solution to the antitrust problem. Rogers and Shaw ultimately agreed to sell it to the Montreal-based company for $2.85 billion in a deal that also closed Monday. 

Staffieri said he has “no regrets at all” about how the company and its advisers managed the process.   

“As it became clear that the government wanted to maintain a fourth wireless competitor, we quickly looked to buyers of Freedom and presented credible options,” he said.

Rogers isn’t looking at other asset sales, Staffieri said, because it’s confident it can meet its pledge to quickly cut its leverage ratio to less than five times without them. In a year’s time, “you’ll see a company that is leading in market share and translating that to strong cash flow growth, with a healthy piece of de-levering the balance sheet.”

Toronto-Dominion becomes biggest bank short with US$3.7 billion on the line

Geoffrey Morgan, Bloomberg News

Turns out, the biggest short in the banking industry anywhere in the world isn’t in Switzerland or Silicon Valley, but rather, in the relatively tame financial centre of Canada.

In recent weeks, short sellers have upped their bearish bets against Toronto-Dominion Bank, and now have roughly US$3.7 billion on the line vis-à-vis Canada’s second-largest lender, according to an analysis by S3 Partners. That’s the most among financial institutions globally and puts TD ahead of the likes of France’s BNP Paribas SA and Bank of America Corp.

Part of it has to do with the general skittishness toward the banking sector after three U.S. regional banks failed and Credit Suisse was forced into a shotgun wedding with UBS Group AG. And there are few signs Canadian lenders have any of the liquidity issues that investors have zeroed-in on recently. But analysts also point to worries about TD’s exposure to the country’s housing slowdown, as well as its ties to the U.S. market through its stake in Charles Schwab Corp. and a planned regional bank acquisition.

“Short sellers have been actively shorting into a declining banking sector,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3’s managing director of predictive analytics

TD didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg. 

Granted, short interest as a percentage of TD’s shares available for trading, or float, remains relatively low at 3.3 per cent and up from 2.8 per cent a year ago. By that measure, TD is third among the top 20 U.S. and Canadian financial firms.

TD’s position atop the list of biggest bank shorts comes as it seeks to close a $13.4 billion deal for First Horizon Corp., which would expand its foothold in the U.S.. TD is widely expected to renegotiate the deal after the recent bout of turmoil among US regional banks drove share prices lower in March.

As a result, traders are “playing with short interest for TD more than normally” because the bank has become a merger arbitration play, according to Daneshvar Rohinton, a portfolio manager at Industrial Alliance.

HOUSING BUBBLE

Rohinton says some short sellers also have zeroed-in on TD because of its roughly 10 per cent stake in Charles Schwab — which recently lost $47 billion in market value as it came under scrutiny over its unrealized bond losses — as well as TD’s position in Canada’s housing market, where variable-rate mortgages are common and consumer insolvencies are on the rise.

“TD sits uniquely in the middle of two broad headwinds,” Rohinton said. “The fears around Canadian housing will be projected onto TD.”

So far, the TD short has been a winner. In March, shares of TD tumbled 11 per cent, which was the biggest decline in the S&P/TSX Banks Index. The decline wiped out C$18.1 billion from the bank’s market value. Nevertheless, S3’s Dusaniwsky cautions that short-seller profits can evaporate just as fast, particularly when they are the result of a broad-based rally.

“Outsized short-selling like we saw in the banking sector are usually knee-jerk reactions to market turmoil and can reverse as quickly as they occur,” he said.

With assistance from Alexandra Semenova.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Competition Ltd.: 

Why major players dominate Canada's business landscape

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

Runaway food prices. A massive day-long telecom outage that knocked out internet and phone service across the country. Flight delays, cancellations and stranded air travellers.

What do all of these things have in common, in addition to being the causes of headaches for Canadians in the last 12 months? Some would say the answer is competition — or, to be more precise, a lack thereof.

From grocery and banking to aviation and the wireless and cable industry, many of the services that Canadians rely on every day are dominated by just a handful of major players. 

And in the last year, critics have pointed to many of the biggest challenges that consumers have faced — from spiking food prices to last summer's Rogers outage to air travel chaos — as proof that this country's competitive environment is broken. 

There are many reasons why Canada's biggest industries are dominated by just a few companies. Some say a large geography and small population make it more difficult for Canada to support more than a few major players in sectors such as aviation.

Others say Canada's restrictions on foreign ownership in some sectors, such as transportation and telecommunications, play a role in limiting choice for consumers, while others put the blame on the supply management system and its role in Canadian agriculture.

But the federal Competition Bureau, the independent law enforcement agency that aims to protect consumers by fostering a competitive marketplace, believes the problem is that Canada's competition laws themselves are weak.

In response to the government's ongoing review of competition policy in Canada, the federal Competition Bureau said in a recent submission that it believes the majority of Canadians see the current competition framework as "outdated, weak, complex, slow and out of touch."

A 2021 Ipsos poll appears to back that up. The poll of 1,001 Canadians found that 88 per cent agreed more competition is needed in Canada because it’s too easy for big business to take advantage of consumers. Nine out of 10 respondents polled agreed that this country should take steps so that small and medium-sized businesses can compete with the larger players.

"I think it's fair to say that competition has become sort of a kitchen-table issue. People are seeing the impact or the ramifications of the lack of competition," said federal Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell in a recent interview.

"They're experiencing it every day, in terms of the prices they pay for many different things, the choices, the quality of service, and the lack of innovation in the Canadian economy."

The Competition Bureau, which is responsible for administering and enforcing this country's Competition Act — which hasn't been updated since 1986 — has been lobbying for reforms it says are needed to bring Canada up to speed with other developed economies.

The Bureau — which has been unsuccessful in challenging some recent high-profile mergers, including the $26-billion acquisition of Shaw Communications Inc. by Rogers Communications Inc., which was approved by the federal government last Friday — has been lobbying for tougher merger review rules. 

It also wants stronger rules against things like collusion and abuse of dominance, when a major player or group acts to stop or substantially reduce competition, things Boswell said are more of a risk in highly concentrated markets such as Canada.

But Michael Osborne, chair of the law firm Cozen O’Connor’s Canadian competition practice, said he doesn't believe the state of competition in this country is as bad as some people like to think — nor is increased competition the answer to every problem facing Canada's economy.

Osborne, who has helped to defend clients in inquiries and proceedings brought by the Competition bureau, said the price Canadians pay for groceries, for example, has far more to do with rampant global inflation than it does with the market dominance of Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro.

"When you have a bad harvest somewhere that pushes up the price of cauliflower ... well, it's not going to be competition law that fixes that," Osborne said. "That's just not what it's for."

He added that if the government gets too aggressive with competition law, it could actually have a chilling effect on economic growth and productivity.

"We don't want a situation where the government is coming into a market and saying, 'You know what guys? You're not competitive enough. So we're going to start making you do stuff,'" Osborne said.

"Because what that really is, is a recipe for government control, centralized control of the economy, government picking winners and losers."

But Boswell said he believes that improving competition in this country will mean better prices, better service, and better choices for Canadians.

"This is a really important issue and I'm glad Canadians are embracing it," he said.

"I'm sorry that they're doing it in the context of very difficult times in terms of inflation and food prices and all of that stuff, but I think what it's done is really focused the minds of Canadians to say, 'We need more competition in this country, so let's get there.'"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 5, 2023.

Rolls-Royce Hires BP Exec As Finance Chief Amid Profitability Push

By City A.M - Apr 03, 2023

Engineering giant Rolls-Royce has appointed BP exec Helen McCabe as its new finance chief as part of a “transformation programme” which was launched by chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic back in February.

In a statement Rolls Royce Helen McCabe, currently senior vice president for finance in the customer and products division at BP,  will be joining the board of the firm as chief financial officer and take a seat on its board.

Current boss Panos Kakoullis is expected to remain in post until at least 31 August in order to deliver and report on the group’s first half results, the firm said.

Rolls Royce chief Tufan Erginbilgic said she has a “track record of promoting rigorous financial discipline” and her experience would be “invaluable as we move, at pace, to transform Rolls-Royce”. 

“I have experienced her abilities first-hand and her skillset will complement the existing capabilities of the executive team, contributing to Rolls-Royce delivering on its significant potential.” he added. “I would also like to extend my thanks to Panos for his dedication to Rolls-Royce and support to me since my arrival.”

Tufan Erginbilgic, who took the helm of Rolls-Royce in January, has called the company a “burning platform” and launched a transformation programme to improve the profitability of the maker of engines for Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 planes.

McCabe’s appointment came amid a wider shakeup, with Rob Watson takes on the role of president of civil aerospace with immediate effect, moving from Rolls-Royce’s electric aviation unit, and Adam Riddle becoming president of the defence business.

Small OPEC Producer To Start New Oil Project Despite Pledge To Cut Output

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 03, 2023

Gabon, a small African oil producer and OPEC member, is days away from first oil at a new offshore development despite joining the surprise new OPEC+ cut of over 1 million barrels per day (bpd) announced on Sunday.

Gabon, which pumps around 200,000 bpd, will see in the next few days first oil from the Hibiscus / Ruche Phase 1 development campaign in the Dussafu offshore license, the drilling contractors and the operator of the license said on Monday.

Norway-based BW Energy said it had completed the drilling and completion operations on DHIBM-3H, the first production well of the Hibiscus / Ruche Phase 1 development. BW Energy has now handed responsibility for the DHIBM-3H well over to the production team, which will finalize preparations for production start-up.

Oslo and London-listed Panoro Energy, holder of the license, said that the well “encountered good quality oil saturated reservoir sands in the regionally prolific Gamba formation and will now be put onstream in the coming days.”

News of a new development offshore Gabon comes hours after the African OPEC producer, alongside the biggest OPEC producers in the Middle East, announced a total of 1.16 million bpd of fresh production cuts. Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader and top global crude exporter, will cut 500,000 bpd and said that the move was “a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market.”

Apart from Saudi Arabia and Gabon, OPEC heavyweights Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait, plus OPEC’s Algeria, and non-OPEC Oman and Kazakhstan, announced the 1.16 million bpd cut beginning in May and lasting through the end of 2023.

Gabon has pledged to cut 8,000 bpd off its output.

Per OPEC’s secondary sources in the latest monthly report, Gabon produced 196,000 bpd of crude oil in February, versus a quota of 177,000 bpd before the cut announced on Sunday.

Gabon’s share of the cuts is small and cannot compensate for the massive underperformance from other African OPEC members such as Nigeria and Angola.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

World Energy Council Emphasizes The Importance Of Natural Gas And Carbon Capture

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 03, 2023

Apart from a massive expansion of renewable-powered electricity generation, the energy transition will need natural gas with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), as well as hydrogen and huge investments in grids, Angela Wilkinson, secretary general and CEO of the World Energy Council, told CNBC. 

“We can’t let perfection be the enemy of the good in this, right? The reality is, to get renewables to scale we’re going to have to have other clean energy friends in the mix, we’re going to have to build multiple clean energy bridges,” Wilkinson said in a recent CNBC panel moderated by Steve Sedgwick.   

“We’re going to have to have hydrogen [doing the] lifting, we’re going to have to have gas with CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage] lifting, we’re going to have to have grid strengthening going on,” added the head of the World Energy Council, the largest network of energy leaders.

Discussions about how to reconcile a global reduction in emissions with the need to continue providing the world with reliable and, preferably, affordable energy have been front and center for a year now after the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring last year.

The energy transition narrative, from the industry's point of view, became part of the 'energy trilemma' as BP's chief executive Bernard Looney has put it—delivering secure and affordable energy when and where it's needed while raising investments in renewables and other low-carbon energy solutions. The top executives of the biggest international oil and gas firms are joining Saudi state oil giant Aramco in calling for an "orderly" transition in which people should get the secure and affordable energy supply they currently need and they currently get from fossil fuels.  

Still, the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) call for urgent action to tackle climate change.

An IPCC report from last month “is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Renewables Projected To Overtake Coal Worldwide By 2027

By ZeroHedge - Apr 03, 2023

For the first time, more electricity was generated from renewable sources in the U.S. over the course of one year than from coal.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, in 2022, renewable energy sources created more than 900 terawatt-hours of electric power in the country compared to a little over 800 that came from coal.

On a global scale, a similar change is coming - renewables are projected to outweigh coal electricity generation by 2027.

Up until 2007, coal accounted for more than 2,000 terawatt hours of electricity in the U.S. before the figure started to declined as regulations around fossil fuels - limits on carbon-intensity and the emissions of toxic elements like mercury - tightened.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Electricity generation from natural gas gained pace as a result since it produces somewhat less CO2.

To reach the emission goals of the net zero age, however, the U.S. has to continue growing carbon-neutral electricity sources like wind and solar, which have been on a steady upwards climb in the new millennium and are now the second biggest source of electric power in the country.

Yet, while gas made up almost exactly 40 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2022, the share of renewables just surpassed 20 percent, comparable to coal and nuclear - showing that there is a long way to go still for renewable energy.

Looking not only at electricity but energy use as a whole, this was seems even longer.

Here, renewable energy is only making up 12 percent as energy sources outside of electricity - most notably petroleum in the form of gasoline - are added to the mix.

By Zerohedge.com

Federal Judge Dismisses Attempt To Block The Willow Oil Project

By Irina Slav - Apr 04, 2023

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against ConocoPhillips for its planned Willow oil project in Alaska by a group of environmentalist organizations.

The judge who heard the case based her decision on internal inconsistencies in the plaintiffs’ declarations arguing that the project will cause irreparable harm. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason also cited the broader public interest as a basis for her decision, the Courthouse News Service reported.

The lawsuits were brought in front of the court by two environmentalist organizations and a Native American community, who argued that the $8-billion Willow project would exacerbate climate change and cause damage to local habitats.

According to Judge Gleason, however, the initial construction works planned by ConocoPhillips concern roads and a gravel mine, which is unlikely to cause the plaintiffs any irreparable harm, Reuters noted in a report of the news.

The Biden administration approved the highly controversial Willow project last month sparking the outrage of environmentalists after pledging to clip the wings of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

The approval also prompted criticism from Biden’s own party, with some arguing allowing the production of more oil in Alaska would be a setback in the fight against climate change.

The $8-billion oil project, led by ConocoPhillips, was awarded to the company by the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management in 2020. The project could deliver 160,000 bpd of crude, the BLM said at the time, with reserves estimated at between 400 and 750 million barrels. The lifetime of the project was estimated at up to 30 years in 2019.

Currently, the rate of production from Willow is seen at between 160,000 bpd and 180,000 bpd. Yet opposition from the environmentalist lobby will likely continue as activists have said that the only development that would satisfy them would be shutting the project down entirely.