Alaska. A frigid, ecologically bounteous but fragile environment. Environmental preservation laws typically protect Arctic environments, and Alaska is usually no exception. The Willow Project— the largest oil drilling operation in United States history—may potentially heavily damage the Alaskan environment while supplying the U.S. with vast amounts of oil. The Willow Project would occur in Alaska’s North Slope in the National Petroleum Reserve. The Houston-based energy company ConocoPhillips, who has been extracting oil from Alaska for years, proposed the project. The Willow Project would produce about 600 million barrels of oil, which is especially appealing to the U.S. because of its great reliance on foreign oil, which is only intensified because of the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
“America has poor domestic resources when it comes to oil, so we rely a lot on other countries,” Presley Spiller (12) said. “Is it worth it though? Are we really going to destroy precious environmental resources, like the wildlife that’s there, all the untouched nature that’s there?”
Many non-indigenous Alaskans support the project as it would open up new jobs to the local population, providing funding for many necessities such as schooling.
“On one hand, jobs are good,” Dylan Spiegel (10) said. “Getting funding for schools is good, but on the other hand I think there are better ways to do this. One example would be taxing billionaires who aren’t paying enough to society, and if they were, [native Alaskans] wouldn’t need these means. Schools would be funded better. People wouldn’t be in poverty needing to look for jobs.”
However, most indigenous Alaskans protested the Willow Project because it would adversely affect the Alaskan environment. Arctic environments such as Alaska are particularly fragile because the cold temperatures severely limit vegetation growth; industrial development would destroy the natural environment.
“Indigenous tribes are a big voice in this,” Spiller said. “Like half of life is uninhabitable because it’s protected because it’s so fragile.”
The Willow Project would produce 9.2 million tons of carbon pollution every year; these carbon emissions contribute to global warming by trapping heat within the atmosphere. As the climate crisis becomes more and more accepted as a global threat, large-scale industrial projects such as Willow are more protested because of how they would only add to the ever-growing problem of climate change.
“The fire word that comes to mind is irreversible,” Spiller said. “It’s an understatement.”
The Willow Project’s building would certainly disrupt many Alaskan ecosystems. The project would necessitate large-scale infrastructure to transfer oil from the drilling site to the market. Hundreds of miles of roads, 89.6 miles of pipeline, 199 oil wells and the main Willow drilling site would all be built throughout the project. The sheer development on The North Slope would destroy many habitats for Alaskan wildlife and would likely disrupt the migration patterns of certain animals, such as caribou. Ecosystems are vastly interconnected, so a slight change in a species’s behavior can drastically affect other populations in the area, potentially causing an ecological disaster.
“When we’ve taken all these animals and we overbreed them and put them in these tiny little warehouses,” Spiegel said. “It’s just an example that we’ve done so many horrible things to animals. We should’ve stopped earlier, we should definitely stop now.”
Many people believe that the Willow Project will be the spearhead of the further industrialization of the Arctic. If such a large-scale drilling project can be completed in such a fragile environment, some believe there would be stopping other massive projects from being conducted in Arctic environments. While smaller projects have been conducted in the Arctic since centuries ago, the sheer magnitude of the Willow Project is frightening to many.
“I do think it’s possible,” Spiegel said. “From what I’ve seen, regions of Alaska are similar to regions of the Arctic. If we can do it in Alaska, we certainly can do it in the Arctic. I’m not saying for sure that it’s going to be the beginning of extracting resources from the Arctic, but I’m saying it’s definitely possible.”
During Biden’s presidential campaign, he vowed to end new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters in the U.S. A federal judge’s executive order struck down the drilling pause in 2021; since then, he has approved many new oil drilling projects. The Willow Project is perhaps the height of this contradiction.
“[Biden] promised that there would be changes in the climate practices in America that Trump reversed and then Biden put back into effect,” Spiller said. “As a minor and as someone who is environmentally involved, I was very excited about this. I knew it wasn’t going to go through as much, but I didn’t know he was just going to lie.”
The Willow Project was approved Tuesday, March 14. The actual drilling won’t happen for quite a while as the infrastructure for the project needs to be built, and government officials must work out some remaining legal issues before the building begins. While Alaska may not feel the effects of Willow for quite some time, its approval nevertheless marks a starting point for large-scale industrialization of the Arctic.
“I’m definitely strongly against the Willow Project,” Spiegel said. “It’s an outrage that it was passed, even though Biden said that he would be helping the environment.”
