President Joe Biden didn’t approve the ConocoPhillips Willow Project for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska due to the pressure from Alaska’s delegation. It wasn’t the persuasive pressure from Sen. Lisa Murkowski or Rep. Mary Peltola. In remarks in Canada on Friday, he mentioned nothing about Alaska Natives going to Washington to lobby for or against the project, or the fact that the entire Alaska House of Representatives, which agrees on almost nothing, signed a resolution of support for the project.
Instead, he was advised by his lawyers that his administration would lose the subsequent lawsuit, if he denied the permit.
“My strong inclination was to disapprove of it across the board but the advice I got from counsel was that if that were the case, I may very well lose … that case in court to the oil company and then not be able to do what I really want to do beyond that,” Biden told reporters Friday during a news conference alongside Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is a foe of the petroleum energy sector and free enterprise in general.
Biden then described his Willow decision as a “hell of a trade off” for the millions of acres of land that had been set aside generations ago for oil production in Alaska that he will now block.
In the approval of the Willow master development plan, ConocoPhillips will be allowed to construct up to three drill sites of the five it proposed. It will also be allowed to build the associated processing and support facilities, including gravel roads and pipelines to the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is so opposed to the project that she would not sign the record of decision, but passed it along to Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau for the official signature.
Biden told reporters on Friday he’s taking millions of acres of the Beaufort Sea, closing off oil and gas drilling and blocking off the federal Arctic Ocean waters. It’s what one Biden official called a “firewall” to prevent any more leases in Alaska’s North Slope region, and it will be promulgated with new rules that affects half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska — some 13 million acres in all that will be taken by the federal government to prevent oil from being developed in the 23.5-million-acre petroleum reserve.
Biden has been trying to mend fences with the furious environmental lobby, which is one of his biggest supporters. Among actions he took subsequent to the Willow decision was the announcement about the millions that would be regulated into non production. Also, shortly after the Willow announcement, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland also took back land the department had traded to a Native corporation in Alaska so that a road could be constructed between King Cove and Cold Bay’s all-weather airport.
“I am banking on, we’ll find out, that the oil company is going to say, not that’s not going to be challenged, and they’re going to go with with three sites. And the energy that’s going to be produced they’re estimated to account to 1% — 1% of the total production of oil in the world,” Biden told reporters, trying to downplay the importance of the decision.
“And so I thought it was a good — the better gamble and a hell of a trade-off to have the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea and so many other places, off limits forever now,” he said.
