The Willow Project is a massive oil drilling project conducted by ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s largest crude oil producer. This project will produce over 600 million barrels of crude oil, drilled straight from the North Alaskan slopes. This project will produce 9.2 million metric tons of carbon, a pollutant that warms our earth. However, the Biden administration wasn’t the first to approve the project.

“Willow was proposed by ConocoPhillips and originally approved by the Trump administration in 2020. ConocoPhillips was initially approved to construct five drill pads, which the Biden administration ultimately reduced to three. Three pads will allow the company to drill about 90% of the oil they are pursuing” CNN Politics said.

On March 13, the Biden Administration officially approved the Willow Project. Biden announced his concern in a press conference.

“My strong inclination was to disapprove of it across the board but the advice I got from counsel was that if that were the case, I may very well lose…that case in court to the oil company and then not be able to do what I really want to do beyond that,” Biden said.  

The approval of this project will create construction jobs, as well as an estimated 300 permanent jobs, generating $10 billion in state and federal revenue.

However, the approval still sparked controversy, especially amongst young people. Over 1 million letters were written to the White House and 3 million signatures were added to a petition trying to stop approval before it happened. Despite the attempts to stop this approval, the Biden Administration ultimately moved forward with the deal. 

What activists believe to be so disastrous about this project is the timeframe. ConocoPhillips will be stationed in Alaska for several years.

“This mega-project will be one of the largest oil and gas developments on federal lands, locking us into 30 years of extraction in sensitive ecosystems near Alaska Native communities…[The] 30-year plan from ConocoPhillips will drill into sensitive Alaskan ecosystems and near Indigenous communities. It’s the single largest oil extraction project currently proposed on US federal land,” Evergreen Action wrote.

Due to construction and the logistics in implementing such an initiative, the Willow Project won’t yield continuously flowing crude oil for several years from now. During this time period and beyond, ConocoPhillips will be mining for decades, extracting Alaska’s natural resources for years to come. 

Another concern for the Willow Project that sparked controversy was its impact on wildlife. Commencement of this project will station oil rigs in previously undisturbed territory – this could lead to the migration of species due to their habitat being disturbed. If habitats are destroyed and harmful gasses are continued to be released, the harm to our planet will be irreversible.

“There is no economy on a dead planet. You know? This isn’t something that’s negotiable,” Jamie Bittner said. “Like if we’re not here, there’s no more economy to worry about.”