The US government on Monday approved a major oil project in Alaska, the Willow project, from the giant ConocoPhillips, which sparked the ire of environmental activists in the United States, who had launched an extensive campaign to raise the alarm on its negative consequences for the climate.
The project has been reduced to three drilling areas, against the five initially requested by the company, however argued the Department of the Interior, which is responsible for federal lands in the United States.
The oil development will take place in an area called the National Petroleum Reserve in northwest Alaska. This is US state land. Democratic President Joe Biden came to power promising not to allow new oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
The approved project will produce 576 million barrels of oil over about 30 years, according to the department’s document. In total, it will result in the indirect emission of the equivalent of 239 million tonnes of CO2.
That’s the equivalent of the emissions from 64 coal-fired power plants for a year, according to a calculation tool from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To give an order of magnitude: in 2020 the United States released the equivalent of 5.9 billion tons of CO2according to the EPA.
Anxious at the same time to give pledges to environmental defenders, the American government has announced that it is working on additional protections for a vast area of the national oil reserve. He also announced that he wanted to permanently ban drilling over a large area of the Arctic Ocean that borders this reserve.
The defenders of the Willow project see it as a source of jobs and a contribution to the energy independence of the United States.
ConocoPhillips, which acquired the concessions in the late 1990s, welcomed the government’s decision and said it was ready to “start road construction activities immediately”. The facilities will be built with “materials primarily made in the United States and sourced from the United States, and have the potential to create more than 2,500 construction jobs, and approximately 300 long-term jobs,” the company added.
“Devastating effects”
But environmental associations denounce a catastrophe for the climate.
“Willow is going to be one of the largest oil and gas operations on federal public lands in the country,” environmental organization Sierra Club said Monday. The carbon pollution it will release into the air will have devastating effects on our people, wildlife, and the climate. We will suffer the consequences for decades to come. »
For days, a wave of videos opposing the project has been sweeping the social network TikTok. An online petition has also garnered more than 3.2 million signatures.
On the contrary, Alaska’s elected officials in the US Congress welcomed the news. “You can almost literally feel Alaska’s future brighten,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said in a statement. We are now on the verge of creating thousands of new jobs, and generating billions of dollars in new revenue. »
The battle surrounding Project Willow has been going on for years. It was initially approved by the Trump administration, before being temporarily halted in 2021 by a judge, who sent it back for further government review.
In early February, the Land Management Office published its environmental analysis of the project, in which it detailed a “preferred alternative option” – the one finally chosen – with three drilling sites. This solution notably limits the impact on the migration of caribou, argued the department. And will help achieve Joe Biden’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, he said.
The Democratic president has promised to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% by 2030, compared to 2005. A goal taken under the Paris Climate Accord, to enable the world’s largest economy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In a statement, the president of the Earthjustice organization, Abigail Dillen, pointed to an apparent contradiction: “We know that President Biden understands the existential climate threat, but he approves a project that derails his own climate commitments. »