The Biden administration this week approved a long-contested oil drilling project in northwest Alaska known as the Willow project, while also moving to limit oil drilling in millions of acres in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. Here, biological oceanographer Kevin Arrigo, oceanographer Rob Dunbar, and environmental law expert Deborah Sivas discuss the areas affected by the decisions, the Willow project’s journey through the courts, and what happens next.
Arrigo is the Donald and Donald M. Steel Professor of Earth Sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Dunbar is the W.M. Keck Professor and a professor of oceans at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Dunbar and Arrigo are both also professors of Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Sivas is the Luke W. Cole Professor of Environmental Law at Stanford Law School and a professor in the social sciences division of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Arrigo, Dunbar, and Sivas are also senior fellows in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Jump to answers:
Sivas: The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a 23-million-acre area on the North Slope in northwest Alaska. It was created and opened for potential leasing and drilling by federal law in the 1970s.
The Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), manages leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve pursuant to a set of drilling, maintenance, and operation regulations. These regulations were adopted decades ago and many would argue that they are not sufficiently protective of the environment. For instance, there have been significant oil spills in Prudhoe Bay, which is between NPR-A and the 19-million-acre Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. And, frankly, the Interior Department does not have a very good track record of enforcing the oil and gas drilling regulations.
Sivas: ConocoPhillips started buying leases here back in 1999. After exploration showed potential for oil recovery, the company proposed what is collectively known as the Willow oil project, consisting of five well pads holding a total of 250 wells. The Trump administration approved the project in 2020, and environmental and indigenous groups challenged that decision in federal district court in Alaska. In 2021, the court vacated the approval on the grounds that the environmental impact statement for the project was legally inadequate.
BLM went back to the drawing board and prepared a supplemental environmental impact statement. Although the Biden administration originally put a moratorium on oil drilling on public lands, BLM ultimately approved the Willow project. The decision reduces the amount of the proposed drilling program – approving only three drilling sites instead of five – and simultaneously puts drilling in the Beaufort Sea off limits. ConocoPhillips will also relinquish 68,000 acres of other leased land in the NPR-A in the most environmentally sensitive part of the reserve.
Nevertheless, if built, the project will be a very significant new fossil fuel development, ultimately producing up to 180,000 barrels per day and generating more than 280 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years. It will also involve construction of a processing facility, roads, an airstrip, pipelines, and a gravel mine – all in or near habitat for caribou, grizzly bears, and many kinds of bird species.
Dunbar: This project has been highly controversial for some time. Many elected Democrats in Alaska were in favor of it, most Alaskans were in favor of it. Some Iñupiat communities are opposed, but the regional native corporation is in favor. The development’s going to bring in new infrastructure – pipelines, roads, gravel pads – near small villages that are dependent upon caribou and native hunting. But it will also bring economic benefits to an area that’s relatively poor. Alaska has had a number of years where the state was almost bankrupt because revenues from oil and gas have declined. That’s a challenge: How do you support or encourage a transition away from oil and gas while also ensuring economic livelihood?
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Q&A: Willow oil project and Arctic drilling limits - Stanford Earth
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