NEW: The Biden administration approves a roughly $8 billion oil drilling project in Alaska, which is a significant climate decision for the administration that had pledged to move away from fossil fuels.
FILE - This 2019 aerial photo provided by ConocoPhillips shows an exploratory drilling camp at the proposed site of the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope. The Biden administration is weighing approval of a major oil project on Alaska's petroleum-rich North Slope that supporters say represents an economic lifeline for Indigenous communities in the region but environmentalists say is counter to Biden's climate goals.
"President Biden is delivering on the most aggressive climate agenda of any U.S. president in history and spurring an unprecedented expansion of clean energy," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Saturday.The Willow Project was initially approved in 2020 by the Trump administration, but a federal judge threw out the permits for the oil project in August 2021, faulting the way the federal government had assessed its environmental impact.
The Willow Project would generate 180,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak– 600 million over the project's lifetime – and is expected to create as many as 2,500 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs near the village of Nuiqsut on Alaska's North Slope, according to ConocoPhillips. But the decision could prove problematic for Biden heading into an expected 2024 re-election bid, given his pledge during the 2020 campaign to allow "no more drilling on federal lands, period."
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