Defenders Urges BLM to Stop the Willow Project and Drilling in the Arctic for Good

Defenders of Wildlife and 12 other organizations sent a letter today to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), expressing deep concern regarding the agency’s attempt to revisit the massive Willow drilling project in the sensitive Alaskan Arctic.
 
The groups – including Defenders of Wildlife, Alaska Wilderness League, Audubon Alaska, Conservation Lands Foundation, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Trustees for Alaska – urged the agency to reconsider the project, particularly when the Biden administration has pledged sharp cutbacks in U.S. carbon emissions.

“We should not be expanding our fossil fuel footprint in the Arctic – period,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, director of Defenders of Wildlife’s Alaska program. “The Willow project threatens denning polar bears, people that call the Arctic home and is at odds with the administration’s commitment to address climate change.”

ConocoPhillips’ Willow Master Development Plan would pump more than 500 million barrels of petroleum from the fragile and rapidly-warming National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) over 30 years. If fully developed, it would add about 260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, an amount that is approximately equal to the emissions of 66 coal-fired power plants, to the planet’s atmosphere.
 
“The scope of the Willow project is significant,” the letter states. “As previously proposed, Willow would involve the construction, operation and maintenance of a massive oil and gas development project, including a new central processing facility with satellite drill pads, a new system of roads, an airstrip, pipelines stretching back to the Alpine facility, a new gravel mine, and use of an offshore island and massive ice bridge to support module delivery via sealift barges.” It continues, “BLM is obligated to consider all of the known direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of this proposal in the Willow Plan SEIS.”

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Tim Grams

In an August 2021 ruling, the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska found that the BLM failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, and vacated BLM’s decision (and an associated Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Opinion regarding impacts to polar bears). The administration did not appeal the court’s decision.