Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
WASHINGTON — It was overcast in Washington D.C. when organizers from the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic stood in front of the White House two weeks ago demanding that President Joe Biden, who ran two years ago on a push for green energy, not approve the Willow Project in Alaska proposed by the Texas-based oil company ConocoPhillips.
The group flew some 5,000 miles to advocate against the project that would further develop some of the most pristine and untouched areas in the entire country.
Then came Monday’s news from the White House when the Biden administration approved the controversial project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich and remote North Slope, a major environmental decision by President Joe Biden that drew quick condemnation by some.
“This great disappointment comes after years of grassroots, Iñupiaq-led opposition, especially from the community most impacted, Nuiqsut. With the support of millions worldwide, Willow went from predominantly an Alaska-based issue to a global concern within weeks, millions of voices stood up against the oil and gas industry to protect the Arctic,” the group said in a Monday press release. “Our team is filled with tears and grief for the Arctic at this time.”
The Biden administration initially said it would only approve two of the five drilling sites but after lobbying efforts by ConocoPhillips, three of the five proposed drilling sites were approved. The head of the oil company said publicly that two drilling sites would not be economically viable.
The announcement came a day after the administration, in a move in the other direction toward conservation, said it would bar or limit drilling in some other areas of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. ConocoPhillips will also relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
“In relationship to the other conservation decisions that were made by the Biden administration, such as the Arctic Ocean withdrawal, the proposed protections for special areas and Conoco’s relinquishment of leases in the Desperation Lake special area, we recognize that these are positive steps, but not nearly sufficient to blunt the impact of any version of the Willow oil and gas project,” Karlin Itchoak, senior Arctic regional director for The Wilderness Society, said. “We cannot allow ConocoPhillips to accelerate the climate crisis. Although we applaud protections for the unparalleled Arctic lands and waters, they do not replace the need to stop Willow.”
The Willow approval by the Bureau of Land Management would allow three drill sites, which would include up to 199 total wells. The project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, according to the company — about 1.5 percent of total U.S. oil production. Willow is currently the largest proposed oil project on U.S. public land.
In addition, hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines will cross the untouched areas of the North Slope. The group will also have to construct several bridges. The noise pollution alone could disturb the caribou populations that local subsistence hunters rely on.
“The drilling project would also cause devastating consequences for wildlife, water resources and subsistence hunting in the Arctic,” Itchoak, Iñupiat, said. “In the long term, environmental and climate impacts of the project would include degraded air quality, and harm to subsistence resources for communities in the region.”
City of Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whose community of about 525 people is closest to the proposed development, has been outspoken in her opposition, worried about impacts to caribou and her residents’ subsistence lifestyles. The Naqsragmiut Tribal Council, in another North Slope community, also raised concerns with the project.
The Bureau of Land Management is under the Department of the Interior, headed by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who remained quiet on the issue, which she had opposed as a New Mexico member of Congress before becoming Interior secretary two years ago, until Monday night.
Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, described Willow as “a difficult and complex issue that was inherited” from earlier administrations. Because ConocoPhillips has held leases in the area for decades, Haaland said officials “had limited decision space” to block the project but focused on minimizing its footprint.
The order, one of the most significant of Haaland’s tenure, was not signed by her but rather by her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau, who grew up in Alaska and briefed state lawmakers on the project Monday.
“The approval of the Willow Project places corporate profits over the rights of Alaska’s Indigenous people, wildlife lands and waters. This green light on Willow from the Biden administration calls into question the future of other landscapes that are threatened by greed fueled projects like the Arctic Refuge,” Itchoak said. “This poses a serious threat to a sustainable future, especially when all of the lands that they’re looking at have Indigenous people that live on or near them, and we’ve been there for 10,000 years or more, since time immemorial.”
Issues like the Willow Project are why the Biden administration needs to create a climate plan for public lands, now more than ever, Itchoak said.
“It’s time for the administration to change the way it approaches drilling for oil on public lands. If it has any hope of meeting its own climate commitments and leading on the kind of fundamental shift in energy policy that a livable future demands,” he said. “This is a crushing step backward at a time when we need this administration and our congressional delegation to make every leasing and permitting decision through the lens of a comprehensive plan to make public lands part of the climate solution.”
(Opinion: Willow Project: Joe Biden has an opportunity to demonstrate commitment to climate action)
While local and national environmental groups disapprove of this move, the most influential and powerful Alaska Native voices, including the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress, Mary Peltola, Yup’ik, support the project. At the beginning of the month, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, from Alaska, noted at a press conference in support of Willow, that Alaska Native royalty was in attendance. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski also supports the project. Alaska’s delegation issued a joint statement on the matter. Sullivan and Murkowski are Republicans and Peltola is a Democrat.
Nagruk Harcharek is president of the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, which represents 24 member organizations based in the North Slope. Those organizations are represented by elected leaders. All 24 member organizations voted unanimously to support the project. There is “majority consensus” in the North Slope region supporting the project, said Harcharek.
“It’s really good for us, specifically on the North Slope, which houses the communities that I represent, from an economic perspective that also translates into cultural benefits as well. A project like Willow, will provide revenue to the North Slope Borough mainly in the form of levy taxes on any infrastructure,” Harcharek said. “That revenue is then reinvested into the communities in the form of services like search and rescue, you’ve got the Department of Wildlife Management, and you have the North Slope Borough School District.”
In addition, the project would provide good paying jobs for local community members, not just in the oil and gas industry.
“Building out the schools and maintaining schools, you’ve got the Public Works division that handles all the water and sewer systems across the North Slope of Alaska. They do all the road maintenance and repairs,” he said. “All of the services that are provided locally by the North Slope Borough are funded through projects like Willow. Those services in the communities need people to fill those seats. So the North Slope Borough is the largest employer in the North Slope.”
The money generated would help families buy the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of equipment needed for subsistence hunting.
“You could take $100 and go to the local grocery store where a gallon of milk is $10 and a box of cereal is upwards of $8, and everything is so expensive. With that $100, if you go to a local grocery store, it could feed your family for two or three days, maybe,” Harcharek said. “But if you take that same $100, you put it in your snow machine and you go out on the land, or you go whaling and you’re successful, you can feed your family for months.”
The project is expected to funnel over a billion dollars in taxes to the local community over the next 30 years. These tax dollars are used for education, infrastructure, maintenance, public utility systems and more.
In the 1970s, the federal government and the state of Alaska wanted the resources in the North Slope. This oil and gas development was going to move forward with or without input from the local Indigenous communities, Harcharek said. The communities incorporated the North Slope Borough that created a seat at the table to negotiate this development.
“If we had not done that our communities would have been left behind,” he said. “Now we’re in a position to be able to fend for ourselves, so to speak, that idea of self determination, we’re able to reinvest those revenues locally to support the people in the communities and our culture.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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