On March 13, The Biden Administration approved the controversial Alaskan oil-drilling deal, The Willow Project, which has sparked a significant debate between local communities and environmental activists. The plan for the project was curated by the oil company ConocoPhillips to drill into Alaska’s Western Arctic, on a national petroleum reserve, federal land, owned by the United States government.
There are two opposing sides to the issue. For Native Alaskans, it will create jobs and help fund health and education services, boost energy production and lessen America’s reliance on foreign oil consumption. Local leaders – including the president of the activist group Voices of the Arctic Inuit, Nagruk Haracheck, believe that the project will bring a much needed new source or revenue and help the local peoples become more self-reliant. “Without that money and revenue stream, we’re reliant on the state and the feds,” Haracheck told CNN.
On the other hand, many environmental activist groups are concerned that drilling in the formerly protected areas could change migration patterns for native species, destroy natural habitats and contribute to the amount of greenhouse pollutants in the atmosphere, as the project will produce roughly 9.2 million tons of greenhouse gasses.
ConocoPhillips plans to build up to 250 new oil wells, five drilling pads, create a processing facility, install thousands of miles of pipeline and build industrial chillers – which presents another potentially alarming consequence. The permafrost in Alaska, a permanently frozen layer of soil, ice and sand on the surface of the earth, is currently melting at an alarmingly fast rate due to climate change, making the ground unstable. For The Willow Project to work, ConocoPhillips needs to keep the land leveled in order to prevent cracks and make sure no melted ice will interfere with the drilling instruments. The company is planning to build industrial chillers, called Thermosyphons, to refreeze the melting ground. The Thermosyphons have already been used in the past for similar projects, but there has been no documented change in the rate at which the ice and permafrost is melting. In a recent statement Alaskan Environment Research and State Director Dyani Champan said, “It’s absurd that as our tundra is melting because of climate change, ConocoPhillips plans to use ‘chillers’ to re-freeze tundra so it can drill for oil that will, in turn, make climate change even worse.” As the permafrost melts, it also releases harmful gasses and bacteria that have previously been trapped in the ground.
The approval of The Willow Project has ignited environmental activism across social media platforms, and over 2.8 million signatures have been signed to a change.org petition to stop the project. It is believed that The Biden Administration was forced to approve the project because ConocoPhillips had valid decade old leases on the land. Despite the administration’s support for environmental causes, in this case it looks like their hands were tied by legal restraints.
As Fieldston Biology teacher, Palma Repole said, “This is such a tragic story of bureaucratic incompetence where something so immoral can be legal. It defies logic…When we truly understand –through education–how the plant works as a system, we should seek to elect legislators who will take away our power to pollute. Literally. We haven’t seen a president since Jimmy Carter talk about a national obligation to limit consumption and his humble ideas were quickly replaced by overconsumption and Reaganomics in the 80’s.”
On April 3, Federal Judge Gleason of the US District Court of Alaska denied the environmental activists’ requests to halt construction on the Willow Project, effectively giving it a green light.
