The battle over Project Willow has been going on for years. Despite pressure from environmental associations, the US government approved this major oil project in northwestern Alaska on Monday, March 13, according to the Department of the Interior, responsible for federal lands in the United States. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had come to power promising not to authorize new oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
The Willow project of the American giant ConocoPhillips, reduced to three drilling zones against the five initially requested by the company, is located in an area called the National Petroleum Reserve. These are US state lands in Alaska.
Defenders of the Willow project see it as a source of jobs and a contribution to the energy independence of the United States. But the environmental associations, which had launched a vast campaign to fight against the project, denounce, they, a catastrophe for the climate. 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 said he wants to permanently ban drilling over a large area of the Arctic Ocean bordering this reserve.
“Devastating effects for our populations, wildlife and the climate”
But “Willow is going to be one of the largest oil and gas operations on federal public lands in the country”the environmental organization Sierra Club said on 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 had swept through the social network TikTok, and an online petition had collected more than 3.2 million signatures.
Project Willow was initially approved by the Trump administration, before being temporarily halted in 2021 by a judge, who sent it back for further government review. At the beginning of February, the land management office had published its environmental analysis of the project, in which it had detailed a “preferred alternative”. The latter reduced the project to three drilling sites instead of five, with approximately 219 wells.
Result of this solution: the production of 576 million barrels of oil over approximately 30 years, according to the estimates of the office. And the emission of 9.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year, or 0.1% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2019.
Joe Biden has promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 50% to 52% by 2030, compared to 2005. A goal taken as part of the Paris climate agreement to enable the world’s largest economy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
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