Fri, March 3, 2023
(Reuters) - Environmental and climate activists are rallying online against ConocoPhillips’ proposed Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska as the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden weighs whether to greenlight the controversial plan.
A petition on Change.org opposing the project has gathered over 2 million signatures, while the hashtag #StopWillow has been trending in social media posts.
Here are some details about the project:
WHAT IS THE WILLOW PROJECT?
The Willow project is a $6 billion proposal from ConocoPhillips' to drill oil and gas in Alaska. It would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.
WILL IT BE APPROVED?
President Joe Biden's administration said in February it would support a scaled-back version of the project.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the project's final environmental review last month, selecting a "preferred alternative" that would include three drill sites and less surface infrastructure than originally proposed. ConocoPhillips had initially wanted to build up to five drill sites, dozens of miles (km) of roads, seven bridges and pipelines.
A final decision could come as soon as this month.
The project had been initially approved by the Trump administration, but a federal judge in Alaska in 2021 reversed that decision, saying the environmental analysis was flawed.
WHAT IS ITS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT?
According to BLM's analysis, the design it endorsed would reduce the project's impact on habitats for species like polar bears and yellow-billed loons.
But environmental groups remain staunchly opposed, arguing the project conflicts with the Biden administration’s promises to fight climate change and poses a threat to pristine wilderness.
"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," the Sierra Club said in a February press release, referring to the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act.
"Allowing Willow to move forward will pose a threat to some of Alaska’s last undisturbed wilderness, to the populations of wildlife that call it home, and to the public health of nearby communities and makes it harder to achieve our climate goals. We must end new leasing on public lands and conserving more nature to secure our climate future," it added.
BLM's parent agency, the Interior Department, has emphasized that the selection of the preferred alternative was not a final decision on approval of the project, adding that it had "substantial concerns" about Willow's impact on greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.
In a statement, ConocoPhillips said the design preferred by BLM represented "a viable path forward" for Willow and said it was ready to begin construction "immediately" upon approval.
WHY IS WILLOW IMPORTANT FOR ALASKA?
The Willow project area holds an estimated 600 million barrels of oil, or more than the amount currently held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country's emergency supply.
The project is important to Alaska's elected officials, who are hoping it will help offset oil production declines in a state whose economy relies heavily on the drilling industry.
ConocoPhillips has said the project would deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for federal and state governments and local Alaska communities.
The Biden administration has also been urging U.S. oil companies to invest in boosting production to help keep consumer energy prices in check.
(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
If Joe Biden can open massive new oil fields, then so can Britain
Matthew Lynn
Matthew Lynn
TELEGRAPH
Sun, March 5, 2023
President Joe Biden talks to reporters after a lunch with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats about his upcoming budget and political agenda, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 2, 2023.
Sun, March 5, 2023
President Joe Biden talks to reporters after a lunch with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats about his upcoming budget and political agenda, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 2, 2023.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
It would be the biggest new oil field in decades. It could supply as much as 2pc of all the oil needed by the United States. And it would be large enough by itself to make a significant difference to the global price, dealing yet another blow to Vladimir Putin’s collapsing war machine in Ukraine.
Over the next couple of weeks, President Joe Biden is expected to approve the Willow Project, a vast new fossil fuel development in Alaska. Despite the fierce opposition of environmental protesters, Biden has decided that the US, and indeed the world, still needs oil.
If the Left-leaning, climate-friendly Biden can approve new energy projects, why can’t we do the same in the UK? No one could possibly accuse Biden of being a climate change denying reactionary. And yet in the US, unlike most of Europe, the debate about energy still has some vague connection to reality.
It recognises that it will take a while and cost a lot to switch to renewables. In the meantime you will need oil and gas – and you might as well produce it yourself rather than buy it from Saudi Arabia.
With plenty of reserves available in this country, perhaps it is time the UK learnt a lesson from Biden – and started to open up some new oil and gas fields of our own.
President Biden is not ignoring climate change or in hock to the oil industry. He is spending so much money on putting the US at the forefront of the shift to green energy that every other country in the world is complaining about the support he is offering.
From subsidies for electric vehicles, to investment in wind and solar power to building the infrastructure for carbon neutral heating, industrial and transport systems he is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to hit net zero as quickly as any other country. On any measure you care to look at, the Biden White House takes this stuff seriously.
And yet, despite that, he is about to approve the biggest new oil field in years. Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project in Alaska has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5pc of the US’s total energy needs.
It will add an extra third to Alaska’s annual production. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry from environmental activists, with opposition petitions attracting more than a million signatures, and accusations that Biden is breaking his election pledge not to allow new oil drilling on federal land (which, in fairness, has more than an element of truth to it).
Even so, the president is poised to ignore all that and approve the project. Drilling could start before the end of the year.
So if the United States, which is largely energy independent, can decide to go ahead with developing new fossil fuels, then why can’t we do the same in the UK?
It is about being realistic. Renewable energy capacity takes a long time, and it will be years before we can switch heating systems and cars to electricity.
In the meantime, we will still need oil and gas, and we might as well produce it ourselves, creating wealth, jobs and tax revenues in the process, instead of buying it from Russia or Saudi Arabia instead. In Washington, that is just obvious. In London, unfortunately, it still isn’t.
The UK ought to get over its bone-headed opposition to new energy production. In the North Sea, producers have been harassed and taxed out of existence.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government did everything in its power to stop new licences being approved, even though it is one of the country’s most important industries. Windfall taxes have been slapped on the sector, with the Labour Party calling for those to be even higher.
When energy giants such as Shell or BP announce bumper profits – hardly a surprise when energy prices are so high – they are vilified, and face calls for even stiffer levies. In response, projects have been put on hold, and investment stalled.
Shell said last year it was ‘reviewing’ (corporate speak for scrapping) the money spent in the North Sea, and so has Norway’s Equinor. We can hardly complain if output is falling.
The record on fracking has been even worse. Even though it enabled the US to be independent in energy, and although Texas has hardly been convulsed by earthquakes, in this country it has been effectively banned despite the fact we have vast reserves of shale oil and gas in the North.
Liz Truss’s doomed pro-growth government briefly tried to revive it, but was shot down in a hail of opposition. The result? The UK has a huge deficit in energy, importing £2 billion more a month in oil alone than we export. But, heck, who cares. Apparently it is better to just buy energy from Qatar, or indeed from Biden’s America, than produce the stuff ourselves.
That is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any difference to the environment whether the oil is extracted in this country or somewhere else.
Nor does running down oil capacity do anything to speed up green technology. It just puts us at risk of shortages when supply is tight. Biden at least has the guts to realise we will still need oil for a while longer, and it might as well be American oil instead of anyone else’s.
It might be too much to hope for from anyone in charge of British energy policy – but it is time we took a lesson from Washington and approved some new energy projects in this country as well.
It would be the biggest new oil field in decades. It could supply as much as 2pc of all the oil needed by the United States. And it would be large enough by itself to make a significant difference to the global price, dealing yet another blow to Vladimir Putin’s collapsing war machine in Ukraine.
Over the next couple of weeks, President Joe Biden is expected to approve the Willow Project, a vast new fossil fuel development in Alaska. Despite the fierce opposition of environmental protesters, Biden has decided that the US, and indeed the world, still needs oil.
If the Left-leaning, climate-friendly Biden can approve new energy projects, why can’t we do the same in the UK? No one could possibly accuse Biden of being a climate change denying reactionary. And yet in the US, unlike most of Europe, the debate about energy still has some vague connection to reality.
It recognises that it will take a while and cost a lot to switch to renewables. In the meantime you will need oil and gas – and you might as well produce it yourself rather than buy it from Saudi Arabia.
With plenty of reserves available in this country, perhaps it is time the UK learnt a lesson from Biden – and started to open up some new oil and gas fields of our own.
President Biden is not ignoring climate change or in hock to the oil industry. He is spending so much money on putting the US at the forefront of the shift to green energy that every other country in the world is complaining about the support he is offering.
From subsidies for electric vehicles, to investment in wind and solar power to building the infrastructure for carbon neutral heating, industrial and transport systems he is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to hit net zero as quickly as any other country. On any measure you care to look at, the Biden White House takes this stuff seriously.
And yet, despite that, he is about to approve the biggest new oil field in years. Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project in Alaska has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5pc of the US’s total energy needs.
It will add an extra third to Alaska’s annual production. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry from environmental activists, with opposition petitions attracting more than a million signatures, and accusations that Biden is breaking his election pledge not to allow new oil drilling on federal land (which, in fairness, has more than an element of truth to it).
Even so, the president is poised to ignore all that and approve the project. Drilling could start before the end of the year.
So if the United States, which is largely energy independent, can decide to go ahead with developing new fossil fuels, then why can’t we do the same in the UK?
It is about being realistic. Renewable energy capacity takes a long time, and it will be years before we can switch heating systems and cars to electricity.
In the meantime, we will still need oil and gas, and we might as well produce it ourselves, creating wealth, jobs and tax revenues in the process, instead of buying it from Russia or Saudi Arabia instead. In Washington, that is just obvious. In London, unfortunately, it still isn’t.
The UK ought to get over its bone-headed opposition to new energy production. In the North Sea, producers have been harassed and taxed out of existence.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government did everything in its power to stop new licences being approved, even though it is one of the country’s most important industries. Windfall taxes have been slapped on the sector, with the Labour Party calling for those to be even higher.
When energy giants such as Shell or BP announce bumper profits – hardly a surprise when energy prices are so high – they are vilified, and face calls for even stiffer levies. In response, projects have been put on hold, and investment stalled.
Shell said last year it was ‘reviewing’ (corporate speak for scrapping) the money spent in the North Sea, and so has Norway’s Equinor. We can hardly complain if output is falling.
The record on fracking has been even worse. Even though it enabled the US to be independent in energy, and although Texas has hardly been convulsed by earthquakes, in this country it has been effectively banned despite the fact we have vast reserves of shale oil and gas in the North.
Liz Truss’s doomed pro-growth government briefly tried to revive it, but was shot down in a hail of opposition. The result? The UK has a huge deficit in energy, importing £2 billion more a month in oil alone than we export. But, heck, who cares. Apparently it is better to just buy energy from Qatar, or indeed from Biden’s America, than produce the stuff ourselves.
That is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any difference to the environment whether the oil is extracted in this country or somewhere else.
Nor does running down oil capacity do anything to speed up green technology. It just puts us at risk of shortages when supply is tight. Biden at least has the guts to realise we will still need oil for a while longer, and it might as well be American oil instead of anyone else’s.
It might be too much to hope for from anyone in charge of British energy policy – but it is time we took a lesson from Washington and approved some new energy projects in this country as well.
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