The North Slope area of Alaska, in a remote region of the Arctic Circle, is one of the last wilderness areas in the United States.
It will soon cease to be so in a good part of its extension.
The administration of Joe Biden, described as "the greatest president of the environment", has given the green light to massive oil development there, even as scientists insist on the urgency of curbing fossil fuel emissions as the only remedy against climate change. .
The so-called Willow project, led by the ConocoPhillips company, will allow the extraction of 180,000 barrels a day, although it will take several years for the crude to start flowing. It is expected that over the next thirty years, 600 million barrels will be extracted from that pristine area.
The paradox facing the United States and other countries is that the clean energy transition lags behind the reality of an economy still largely driven by oil consumption. "If the world turned off the fossil fuel tap tomorrow, all hell would break loose," says an article in the prestigious magazine The Atlantic.
In his calculations, he indicates that, in the event of this closure, 30% of global electricity and 9% of transport would continue to operate. Billions would be stranded at home, in the dark. He qualifies, however, that although the leaders talk about the transition, they think more about the supply of oil and gas for the next week, month or year, when a project like Willow will take decades to become operational and the scenario will then be very different.
In this context, the decision of the Biden government takes place, which has provoked the ire of activists and numerous Democratic legislators. Many feel betrayed by a president who, as a candidate, promised "there will be no more drilling on federal land, period."
Last year he signed multi-billion dollar legislation to deploy green infrastructure on the grounds that global warming "is a threat to the existence of humanity."
But this week it signed off on one of the biggest oil drilling projects in decades. The construction will involve an investment of 7,000 million dollars and will generate 2,500 jobs and millions in profits for the State. On the ground, Republicans and Democrats defended this initiative, which instead opened the most popular signature collection campaign ever carried out on Change.org.
Willow's scale is enormous. Its design includes more than 200 oil wells, miles of pipeline, an airport and central processing plant, and another gravel processing plant set up to allow extraction of oil well beyond the time recommended by scientists in order to avoid disastrous global warming.
The consumption of crude produced in this exploitation will be equivalent to the emission of 280 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in those three decades, always based on federal analysis.
This will add 9.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually, which is like putting two million cars on the road each year.
The cost of fuel, the elections that are looming on the horizon and legal issues are the possible justifications for the turn of the White House. Especially because of the legal issue, because ConocoPhillips has had leases on the drilling site to do prospecting for more than two decades. The Government considered that denying the permit would lead to a long lawsuit that could cost the public coffers no less than 5,000 million.
Instead of going to confrontation, the Administration sets limits. Instead of five drilling sites, there will be three. In addition, the company agrees to return 27,600 hectares of that environment. And the Administration will put coastal wetland protection limitations on Lake Teshekpuk. This would work as a sort of safety belt to prevent the Willow project from expanding further.
Biden also wants to protect and put out of the perimeter almost 1.5 million hectares in the Beaufort Sea, in the Arctic Ocean sector.
But these measures could be worthless for future governments and seem more than insufficient for environmentalists.
Ben Jealous, a Democrat and president of the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and most influential environmental organizations, stated that "the announcement is nothing more than window dressing" when speaking of those adopted restrictions. In his statements to the media, he expressed it in an even more graphic way: "If President Biden were here, he would tell him not to spit on us and want us to believe that he is raining."
In a joint statement, several Democratic lawmakers accused the Administration of "ignoring the voices" of affected communities and science, which warns us against initiatives like this.
An activist specified that "the best Willow project is not having a Willow project."
