Biden administration seeks to mend fences over Willow Project approval

The Biden administration is trying to mend fences with progressive groups and voters furious over its decision to approve a massive oil drilling effort in Alaska known as the Willow Project.

The project has garnered significant opposition, not only from environmentalists, but from young voters broadly, with topics like #StopWillow trending on TikTok in the days before the administration greenlighted it.

Leading up to and following the decision, the administration made overtures to the environmental movement seeking to listen to the concerns of advocates.

After the announcement, officials with the White House Council on Environmental Quality met with environmental organizations, a person familiar with that effort told The Hill.

The officials took on more of a listening role in those sessions as groups, including more mainstream environmental groups that are typically allies with the administration, expressed their anger.

The administration’s public message on Willow has been that the project was approved because of legal constraints, since leases to drill there were granted years ago. Officials have also noted that the size of the project was shrunk down from ConocoPhillips’s original proposal.

“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 said Friday.

Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado, told The Hill that a person with the lease has a right to develop energy on that lease, so the government would have to give them some right to drill there — or it would have to buy back the leases, which could have a hefty price tag.

The administration has also announced a series of moves on conservation, though it does not appear that has mollified those upset with the Willow move.

“You can’t cover up carbon emissions with conservation,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told The Hill.

“The impact of the Willow Project is so extensive and expansive. It is really hard to imagine a way to make up for the carbon emissions,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that the approval broke trust with young and progressive voters.

The Willow Project is a ConocoPhillips effort to extract 576 million barrels of oil from Alaska over a 30-year period. It is estimated to result in 239 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifespan — equivalent to driving more than 51 million gasoline-powered cars for a year.

The day before the decision, the Interior Department said it would propose protections for 13 million acres of federally owned land in Alaska that have significant natural and historic value. It also said it would block 2.8 million acres in the Arctic Ocean from oil and gas drilling, though there has not been a federal lease sale in the Arctic Ocean since 2007.

The day after the Willow decision, the administration withdrew a Trump-era land swap that would have allowed construction of a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

The following week, President Biden announced the designation of two new national monuments and efforts to expand a third marine monument.

Those moves did garner applause from environmentalists, but many said the policies did not make up for the impacts of the Willow Project.