BLM will give public a chance to comment on massive Willow project

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA – The federal Bureau of Land Management today announced that it will accept input to help shape the agency’s development of a supplemental environmental impact statement on the Willow Master Development Plan submitted by Conoco Phillips Alaska Inc. This follows a ruling last summer by U.S. District Court of Alaska Judge Sharon Gleason that the Trump administration failed to evaluate the project’s negative impacts on wildlife and the impact that burning so much oil would have on the world’s climate.

The project in the western Arctic’s National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska could produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day over a 30-year period.

In response to today’s announcement, The Wilderness Society released the following statement from its Alaska state director, Karlin Itchoak:

“We are pleased to see BLM taking this step and hope it will be the start of the kind of open and robust process the public deserves. Under the previous administration, this project was rubber-stamped by BLM without meaningful disclosure or a plan to offset the environmental damage that drilling would cause to local communities and the unique, wild places that deserve protection.

“We stand in solidarity with Indigenous communities in the region who are working to protect their lands and waters in the face of a project that would cause irreparable harm to local ecosystems and the world’s climate,” Itchoak added. “We hope the Biden administration will lead the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels and toward a more regenerative economy.”