As the Biden administration moves on from hectoring gas station owners to cut prices and returns to begging the Saudi government to pump more oil, there’s a case in Alaska that shows how hard it can be to develop new oil fields on federally-owned land.
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As The Wall Street Journal reports, ConocoPhillips has been trying to develop a new project on federal land in the Alaskan Arctic called “Willow.” The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to shrink the project’s size, but still allow it to proceed.
A big reason BLM is making the project smaller: a court ruling that said the government “failed to properly assess the project’s impact on climate change and its potential harm to polar bears.”
There are more such legal challenges either underway, or in the making:
A coalition of environmental groups…sued the Biden administration in an effort to stop more than 3,500 permit applications from energy companies to drill for oil and gas on federal lands.
The groups argued the administration hasn’t considered the damage that climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions from drilling does to endangered species, and that permit approvals in Wyoming and New Mexico violated federal laws including the Endangered Species Act.
The groups said burning fossil fuels from drilling is heating the planet and damaging imperiled species like Hawaiian songbirds, desert fish, ice seals and polar bears. The administration’s approved permits, they said, will release up to 600 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
The lawsuit is the latest attempt by environmentalists to pressure the administration to halt new drilling permits. Earlier in his term, Biden sought to commit to his campaign promise to suspend new drilling on federal lands, but was thwarted after legal challenges from GOP-led states and the oil industry.
While the outcome of such legal challenges is unclear, one thing is certain: they will delay any production on federal lands for years, if not decades.
All the more reason to look on with wonder at the U.S. shale revolution, which made the U.S. a net exporter of fossil fuels in a few short years. A big reason for that success? “Shale gas development in the United States has taken place primarily on private land.”
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