Biden administration to approve major oil project in Alaska -source
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Loading... - Matias Salinas
- 13 Mar 2023
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U.S. President Joe Biden's administration will approve a major and controversial oil drilling project in Alaska on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The decision to move ahead with the project by authorizing three drill sites in northwestern Alaska would come a day after Biden announced sweeping curbs on oil and gas leasing to protect up to 16 million acres of water and land in the region.
The Willow project, led by energy giant ConocoPhillips , would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.
The project, announced in January 2017, is expected to produce about 600 million barrels of oil equivalent over its life, peaking at 180,000 barrels of oil per day, ConocoPhillips says on its website.
Earlier on Sunday, the U.S. Interior Department unveiled actions to make nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean "indefinitely off limits" for oil and gas leasing, building on an Obama-era ban and effectively closing off U.S. Arctic waters to oil exploration.
In addition to the drilling ban, the government will put forward new protections for more than 13 million acres of "ecologically senitive" Special Areas within Alaska's petroleum reserve, the administration said in a statement on Sunday. Read More…
