The proposed Willow project, in the National Petroleum Reserve, passes muster on policy and environmental grounds.
The proposed Willow project, in the National Petroleum Reserve, passes muster on policy and environmental grounds.
J oe Biden was a sworn enemy of fossil fuels during his 2020 campaign. He called for eliminating net carbon emissions by 2020 as part of his plan to “end fossil fuel.” His first act as president was to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline, and he followed that up by scrapping leases by oil and gas companies on federal lands and threatening them with a windfall-profit tax.
But Biden may be having a few second thoughts now. He could be on the verge of approving an innovative Alaska oil-and-gas project in the coming days that has significant support from labor unions and Native Alaskan tribes.
The proposed Willow project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve would produce 180,000 barrels of oil each day, create $10 billion in tax and royalty revenues, and create 2,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent positions.
What has changed?
First, Biden’s anti-energy policies and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have caused prices for oil, natural gas, and electricity prices to more than double in the past year. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s dealings with inflation, and 60 percent disapprove “on both gas prices and the economy overall.”
Second, Biden’s Department of Energy has just quietly released a report touting the economic benefits of the Keystone XL Pipeline, noting that its cancellation cost 11,000 pipeline workers their jobs. Even Biden’s energy advisers privately admit that the nation has to boost its domestic energy production, and that today over 70 percent of that comes from oil, gas, and coal.
Third, Democratic labor unions are heavily lobbying the Biden administration to approve the Willow project.
Biden’s labor secretary, Marty Walsh, told Bloomberg this month: “The labor unions are certainly putting lots of pressure and calling me on this all the time because they’re concerned about it.”
But environmental groups have a firm BANANA attitude towards the Willow project. (That acronym stands for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.) “Our recent climate wins, the clean energy advancements we’ve made, President Biden’s 2030 goals — they’re all for nothing if the administration approves this colossal drilling project,” Magnolia Mead of This Is Zero Hour told the Alaska Journal.
The Willow project shouldn’t be all that controversial. The area where it will be built is called part of the National Petroleum Reserve for a reason. It was established by President Warren Harding exactly 100 years ago as a source of oil for the U.S. Navy. But no oil for private use ever flowed from the reserve until ConocoPhillips established its first small field there in 2015. The Willow project is the first major development expansion from that foothold.
While some Native American groups in the lower 48 states oppose the Willow project, those who are closest to it are generally strong supporters. Last fall, Harry Brower, the mayor of Alaska’s North Slope Borough, and Amaulik Edwardsen, the president of the Borough, jointly wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
We are tired of outside groups trying to turn this project and every other oil and gas project in our region into the poster child for a global movement away from fossil fuels. This is more than a political oil debate for us; it’s about access to land we were promised many years ago. Without projects like Willow and their crucial economic benefits, many of my neighbors would be forced to leave the lands they and their ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years.”
The two officials also said that new national-security considerations argue for the swift approval of Willow: “It’s time to replace oil imported from countries like Russia with cleaner and safer Alaskan oil.”
The Willow project has been studied to death since it was first proposed 22 years ago. It passes muster on policy, land-use, and foreign-policy grounds. The only major argument against it is that it will increase carbon emissions, but that objection comes from groups that fundamentally oppose any development project that isn’t wind or solar.
President Biden could decide to continue blindly siding with the environmentalist community and oppose any realistic efforts to restore American energy independence.
Or he can heed the concerns of Americans — 28 percent of whom admit to having abstained from buying food or medicine in 2021 in order to pay an energy bill. The political choice should be clear. If Democrats want to appeal to middle-class voters, their pursuit of policies that raise energy prices won’t help them in the 2024 presidential election.