Senator Maria Cantwell weighs in against ConocoPhillips’ Willow Arctic drilling project

Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, has weighed in on the side of con­ser­va­tion­ists as the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion read­ies a deci­sion on Cono­coPhillips $6 bil­lion oil drilling project in Arc­tic Alaska.

Cantwell joined a let­ter — also signed by Ore­gon’s U.S. Sen­a­tors Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, but not any Wash­ing­ton col­leagues — oppos­ing the Wil­low Project.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Man­age­ment has rec­om­mend­ed scaled-back approval with three rather than five drilling platforms.

The poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion to Arc­tic ecosys­tems, from cli­mate dam­age, “is irre­versible and irre­spon­si­ble to future gen­er­a­tions,” said Cantwell. “Oil com­pa­nies already have record prof­its and access to drilling rights on mil­lions of acres of pub­lic lands which they should be using to meet our cur­rent fos­sil fuel needs.”

Press­ing against the Wil­low Project are such groups as the Sier­ra Club and Ever­green Action, an envi­ron­men­tal action orga­ni­za­tion with roots in Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s brief pres­i­den­tial foray.

The Alas­ka con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion, North Slope native groups and labor have ral­lied to Wil­low, and met with Pres­i­dent Biden to make their case.

“Alaska’s del­e­ga­tion and North Slope peo­ple are speak­ing as loud­ly as we can about the impor­tance of the Wil­low Project: It’s time for D.C. to lis­ten,” said new­ly elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mary Peltola.

The Wil­low Project would be locat­ed in the Nation­al Petro­le­um Reserve, which is a tract of fed­er­al land locat­ed to the west of Prud­hoe Bay.

It is pro­ject­ed to yield six hun­dred mil­lion bar­rels of oil over thir­ty years. It would send $17 bil­lion in rev­enue to fed­er­al, state, and region­al coffers.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion has report­ed­ly offered sweet­en­ers to envi­ron­men­tal­ists, such as a ban on off­shore drilling in Arc­tic Ocean waters.

Cantwell has cham­pi­oned con­ser­va­tion in the Last Fron­tier, and won impor­tant vic­to­ries of late. The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion has used the fed­er­al Clean Water Act to block a mas­sive open pit mine (the pro­posed Peb­ble Mine) that the min­ing lob­by want­ed to locate between two prime Bris­tol Bay salmon streams. It has put old growth forests in the Ton­gass Nation­al For­est off lim­its to logging.

Wil­low is a very big deal. It has been care­ful­ly designed to pre­serve per­mafrost and min­i­mize the “foot­print” on tun­dra and wet­lands. But it would gen­er­ate an esti­mat­ed 9.2 mil­lion met­ric tons of car­bon diox­ide a year.

Once more, as with the bat­tle over oil drilling in the Arc­tic Refuge, Cantwell is pit­ted against a some­time col­lab­o­ra­tor, Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska.

Wil­low is, in Murkowski’s words, “an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and job cre­at­ing project that must be approved.” It was approved dur­ing the Trump regime, but a fed­er­al judge deemed the envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies inadequate.

In oppo­si­tion, words from Sen. Mar­tin Hein­rich, D‑New Mex­i­co: “I would urge Pres­i­dent Biden to ask him­self what he thinks Amer­i­cans will val­ue more a cen­tu­ry from now: a few bar­rels of oil that are already long gone, or the pro­tec­tion of one of the world’s tru­ly great wildlife spectacles.”