Wednesday’s decision is a setback for ConocoPhillips’s Willow project, which aims to produce more than 100,000 barrels a day on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post
A federal judge threw out the permits Wednesday for a controversial oil project planned for Alaska’s North Slope, faulting the way the federal government had assessed its environmental impact, including how it might harm polar bears.
ConocoPhillips’s Willow project had been backed by both the Trump and Biden administrations, despite a host of concerns environmentalists and others raised about how the large operation might affect wildlife and Indigenous communities.
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U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason — an Obama appointee — wrote in her ruling that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incorrectly approved the project because they failed to adequately analyze its climate impact and other possible development plans, and didn’t specify how polar bears would be protected.
The decision is a major blow to the project, which has been touted by Alaska’s congressional delegation and industry as an important source of jobs for the state. The project, west of Prudhoe Bay in the Alaskan Arctic, could produce up to 160,000 barrels of oil per day.
