The decision removes one of the last obstacles to the Willow project, which would be the largest oil development on federal land in decades, and has become a flashpoint for climate activists.
The massive Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope can move forward, a federal judge in Anchorage ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason rejected the claims of environmental groups, who argued the government’s decision to approve the ConocoPhillips project didn’t adequately consider its contribution to climate change and potential harm to the region’s threatened polar bears.
The decision removes one of the last obstacles to the project, which would be the largest oil development on federal land in decades, and has become a flashpoint for climate activists.
Environmental groups said they plan to appeal.
« [The U.S. Department of Interior’s] decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals, in the face of the worsening climate crisis, » said Erik Grafe, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, in an emailed statement.
The Willow project gained national attention earlier this year, when a campaign calling on the Biden administration to block the project went viral. On TikTok, videos tagged #StopWillow and #StoptheWillowProject attracted hundreds of millions of views. Young people, in particular, took to social media to argue that a fossil fuel project this big would boost greenhouse gas emissions and is incompatible with President Biden’s commitments to tackle climate change.
ConocoPhillips has been trying to develop Willow for years. The company first received approval in 2020, during the Trump administration. But Judge Gleason tossed out those permits the next year, saying the government hadn’t adequately assessed the project’s potential environmental impacts.
In March, after a new round of environmental assessments, the Biden administration granted ConocoPhillips permission to go ahead with a slightly scaled-back version of the Willow project, approving three drill sites.
