News is out this morning that the Biden administration will approve an oil project in Alaska for the company ConocoPhillips.
Biden is said to have been actively involved in the approval process.
ConocoPhillips has reportedly been trying to get this project approved for years, but they are only getting three out of five oil drilling sites approved.
Here’s more via Fox News:
The Biden administration is set to announce Monday that it is moving forward with approving a massive 30-year oil drilling project in Alaska over objections about its environmental impact from climate activists and Democratic lawmakers, sources told The Associated Press.
The Department of Interior (DOI) is expected to approve three of the five drilling sites proposed by oil company ConocoPhillips as part of its Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve located in North Slope Borough, Alaska, a congressional aide with knowledge confirmed to Fox News Digital. ConocoPhillips previously stated that, for the project to remain economically viable, the federal government would need to approve at least three of the sites.
As part of the decision, the administration is also flatly rejecting the two other drilling sites and a road leading to one of those sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, The New York Times reported. And the Houston-based company agreed to forfeit more than 67,000 acres of drilling rights that it owns for a separate project.
While the DOI will issue the final decision Monday morning, President Biden and senior White House officials have been actively involved in overseeing the approval process.
The expected final record of decision, meanwhile, comes years after ConocoPhillips first proposed the project. Willow was originally approved under the Trump administration before a federal judge ordered the government to conduct a more rigorous environmental analysis following a legal challenge from climate advocacy groups.
The company has forecasted the project will produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day, create more than 2,500 construction jobs and 300 long-term jobs, and deliver as much as $17 billion in revenue for the federal government, Alaska and local communities, many of which are Indigenous. The project will lead to the construction of up to 250 wells, multiple pipelines, a central processing plant, an airport and a gravel mine.
Over its three-decade lifespan, Willow is projected to produce up to 614 million barrels of oil. In 2022, producers in the U.S. drilled for 4.3 billion barrels of oil on federal lands and waters.
But Chip Roy says that Biden is only approving ‘crumbs’:
Biden offering crumbs of oil drilling in Alaska is a beard to cover up his devastation of American energy independence in pursuit of radical, woke, climate fetishism – driving inflation, & the banking crisis we are in now.
Biden offering crumbs of oil drilling in Alaska is a beard to cover up his devastation of American energy independence in pursuit of radical, woke, climate fetishism – driving inflation, & the banking crisis we are in now. #ShrinkDCGrowAmerica https://t.co/2j75ZzErFx
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) March 13, 2023
I’m sure Biden will use this approval to claim that they are not anti-oil drilling. But as Roy suggests, approving one project doesn’t begin to make up for the devastation they’ve caused to American energy.