What is the Willow Project in Alaska and Why is It Controversial

Despite earlier professing his admiration of green renewable energy, the current occupant of the Oval Office has proved he has no qualms about increasing fossil fuel extraction on US soil, while at the same time taking steps ostensibly aimed at protecting the environment.

Under the auspices of the Willow Master Development Plan, ConocoPhillips Alaska would be able to drill at three of the five sites it initially sought, with the drilling pads being expected to cover some 380 acres within the Bear Tooth Unit of the North Slope Borough.

This decision has been hailed by ConocoPhillips Chairman and CEO Ryan Lance who claimed that the project helps boost the United States’ energy security and create “good union jobs” while also fitting into the Biden administration’s “priorities on environmental and social justice.”

The latter bit of Lance's remark might have been a reference to another Biden administration initiative in the North Slope, which involves banning all oil and gas development on a vast swathe of land and sea in the region, and which comes as the White House allows oil drilling in another part of the same borough.

At the same time, the US government also declared its intent to curb oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean waters off the coast of the North Slope, the same region where the Willow Project takes place.

In an apparent bid to protect the habitat of Arctic wildlife such as polar bears and seals, the Biden administration declared some 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea near the North Slope coast as indefinitely off limits to any oil and gas leasing.

Additionally, the US government seeks to bar any oil and gas development in some 13 million acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, also located in the North Slope.

In 2022, the United States attempted to deal a blow to the Russian economy by imposing sanctions against Russia’s energy exports, seeking to punish Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.

This move backfired spectacularly, with fuel prices in the US skyrocketing as Washington’s attempt to impose its will upon global oil trade sent ripples across oil markets.

While the Biden administration sought to combat this development with a massive release of fuel from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which sank to its lowest level since 1984 as a result, the White House found itself in a situation where ramping up domestic oil production likely would have been a prudent move.

The situation was complicated by the fact that Joe Biden has been something of a proponent of shifting to renewable energy generation, and one of the first things he did after assuming the office of the president of the United States was to revoke permits for the Keystone XL pipeline project that would have helped ferry crude from Canada to the United States.

Yet now Joe Biden, the same US president who advocated curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the country, gives a go-ahead to a domestic oil drilling project while at the same time pushing for conservation in the same area the drilling will be taking place.

The Biden administration’s initiatives at the North Slope have already come under fire from both proponents and opponents of oil drilling.

John Boyle, commissioner designee of the Natural Resources Department for the State of Alaska, lamented that “forestalling development” at millions of acres of territory in order to “atone” for the Willow project is “emblematic of an environmental fanaticism that should concern all rational people.”

A conservation and advocacy group called the Center for Western Priorities also warned that the Willow Project is estimated to produce up to 287 metric tons of CO2 during the next 30 years, which does not seem to align with Biden’s previously declared goal to halve the greenhouse gas emissions in the country by the end of this decade.

Meanwhile, a change.org petition calling the Biden administration and ConocoPhillips to abandon the Willow Project has accrued over 3.3 million signatures by March 14.