On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden promised to ban all new oil drilling on federal land.
The Biden administration, brushing aside climate concerns from environmental groups, approved a controversial oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope. The Interior Department gave the green light to US energy giant ConocoPhillips to drill for oil at three sites in the federally owned National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s pristine western Arctic. During the 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden had vowed not to approve any new oil and gas leases on public lands and he had been under intense pressure by environmentalists not to approve the so-called Willow Project. Alaska lawmakers and other backers of the drilling plan had lobbied strongly for approval of ConocoPhillips’s US$8 billion project, defending it as a source of several thousand jobs and a contributor to US energy independence, with production of 180,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak, or some 576 million barrels over 30 years. ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance welcomed the Interior Department’s move as the “right decision for Alaska and our nation”, but it was met with immediate criticism from environmental groups. “We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden administration committed to advancing,” said Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen.
