🎧 Listen: In today’s episode of The Journal podcast, AndrewRestuccia explains why President Biden shifted his stance on Alaskan oil drilling in approving the Willow project
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.Ryan Knutson: When Joe Biden was campaigning to be President in 2020, he made his stance on new oil drilling in the US pretty clear.Joe Biden: Totally opposed to it. Completely totally oppose it.Joe Biden: And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period. Period. Period. But the Arctic Circle is a disaster to do that. A big disaster in my view.
Andrew Restuccia: They're one of the biggest oil companies in the world, certainly one of the biggest in the US. They have a range of fossil fuel oriented businesses including this one drilling in Alaska. Dan Sullivan: This isn't just important for Alaska, it's important for America in terms of energy security, almost 200,000 barrels at peak production. We certainly need that, the highest-Andrew Restuccia: The main argument that environmentalists are making, and this is the term that they use, is that it's a ticking carbon bomb.
Ryan Knutson: Even though ConocoPhillips leased the land, it still needed the US government to approve the project before the company could start work at the site. At the time, Donald Trump was President and he supported more domestic oil drilling. Here he is in 2018 talking about what he did for the US oil industry.
Ryan Knutson: He followed those executive orders with more. Suspending all new oil and gas leases on federal land. So how did Biden go from moving against the fossil fuel industry to approving one of the largest drilling projects on federal lands? That's next. In February of 2022, Joe Biden's plan to move the country away from fossil fuels was dealt a blow. Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices shot up.
Ryan Knutson: One way the administration could get more oil was through the Willow Project in Alaska, but the project had been stalled after environmentalists sued. And in 2021, a judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management's environmental impact statement was faulty. Ryan Knutson: Like, someone is going to drill this, the world's going to need this oil, so it may as well come from the United States.Ryan Knutson: Last week, the Biden administration officially approved the Willow Project, but with only three drilling sites rather than the five ConocoPhillips had originally requested. Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior, posted a video on social media about the decision.
Ryan Knutson: It sounds like the Biden administration is trying to thread a narrow line here. It's like, "Okay, fine, we can approve this project, but we sort of hope it'll be the last one, and we want to try to put some barriers around it so that there aren't any more." Ryan Knutson: Vice President Kamala Harris defended the administration's climate record on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week.
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