Biden approves oil extraction project in Alaska – 03/13/2023 – Environment

US President Joe Biden approved this Monday (13) a huge oil extraction project in Alaska. Named Willow, the development has faced strong opposition due to its environmental and climate impact.

The $8 billion venture by ConocoPhillips will be one of the largest of its kind on US soil and is expected to deliver up to 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years. The oil field is located in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, which belongs to the US government and is of great importance for biodiversity.

Burning the fossil fuels extracted from Willow could release nearly 280 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The United States is the largest historical emitter of carbon and the second largest annual polluter, second only to China.

In early February, the environmental impact report issued by the Land Management Department noted “substantial concerns” with the project, due to greenhouse gas emissions and the impact on wildlife and indigenous communities.

Activists and environmentalists had been running a campaign to stop the approval, which mobilized thousands of people on social networks, especially on TikTok, where videos with the hashtag #StopWillow accumulate millions of views.

The online protests have also resulted in more than a million letters sent to the White House, as well as a petition that has accumulated more than 3.2 million signatures.

In a statement, Ryan Lance, president and CEO of ConocoPhillips, said this was “the right decision for Alaska and our nation” and that the project “fits with the Biden administration’s priorities on environmental and social justice.”

The climate banner was one of the main ones in the campaign of the American president, who even said “no more drilling [para petróleo e gás] on federal lands, period”.

According to The New York Times, along with the authorization, the US government declared that it will restrict offshore oil exploration in the Arctic Ocean and on the North Slope of Alaska, the region where the Willow project will be installed, in an apparent effort to moderate criticism of the decision.

The Department of the Interior said it would issue new rules to block oil and gas extraction in more than 52,000 square kilometers of the 93,000 square kilometers that make up the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}