JUNO, Alaska (AP) – A federal court of appeals panel on Friday refused to override approval of a massive Willow Oil Project in Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, although flawed in how the approval was reached.
The decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is a long-term dispute over the project, with the then-Joe Biden administration recently greenlighting in March 2023, and is currently under development of Conoco Phillips Alaska’s National Oil Reserve.
The court’s majority opinion, as part of its analysis in Willow’s approval, discovered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management what it called a procedural error (not serious or substantive). The court sent the matter back to the agency for additional work.
The majority ruled that it was unfair to negate approval of the project and that the consequences were serious, but Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez opposed at that time.
Previous versions of the project approved during President Donald Trump’s first term have been overturned in 2021, leading to an environmental review process completed under Biden, which elicited the latest legal challenges from environmentalists and grassroots Iñupiat groups.
The Republican governor of Alaska, his congressional delegation and the state legislature support Willows. The project also has broad support among Alaskan Native leaders in the North Slope and groups with ties to the areas that Willows consider to be economically important to their communities.
However, critics cited the project as conflicting with Biden’s pledge to combat climate change, raising concerns that it would promote further industrialization of the region.
Trump has expressed support for additional drilling in the reserve as part of a broader Alaska-specific executive order he signed when he took office, aimed at promoting drilling, mining and logging of oil and gas in the state.
During the cold weather season, Conoco Phillips Alaska is working on building infrastructure such as new gravel roads, bridges and pipelines at its project site, laying out a timeline for the first oil production in 2029.
J. Elizabeth Peace, a spokesman for the US Department of the Interior, said he had not commented on the lawsuit. The Bureau of Land Management is located inside.
The appeals panel’s ruling comes more than a year after hearing the debate in the case. Environmental groups and grassroots sovereignty iñupiat had appealed to a lower class ruling that supported Willow’s approval for the living Arctic Circle. On Friday, the lawyers representing the group were evaluating the next steps.
Previous discussions, which were primarily focused by the Court of Appeals panel, argued that the land management agency did not consider alternative areas of the “rational” scope in the environmental review, and the group’s arguments considered alternatives to those that allowed the project to be fully fielded.
Counsel for Conoco Phillips Alaska claimed that the leases of the company’s bear tooth unit in the northeastern part of the oil reserve are in an area open to leases and surface development, and that the agency has developed the unit for the issue of leases over the years. Willow is in the unit.
According to Friday’s ruling, agencies during the environmental review process took the stance that they needed to screen alternatives that would leave economically viable amounts of oil behind, but did not explain whether the ultimately approved compensation planning plan was satisfied with the full-field development standards.
The agency “sembled the environmental review based on the complete field development standards and there was a reasonable explanation for doing so,” the ruling states. “But that doesn’t allow BLM to deviate from the norm without explanation.”
Conocophillips Alaska had proposed five drilling sites for Willow, and the Bureau of Land Management approved three, including up to 199 wells.
Eric Grafe, Earth Justice’s lawyer who represented several of the groups that challenged Willow, saw the ruling as a partial victory.
“They found the fundamental flaws that conclude that BLM will act arbitrarily in approving the Willow Project, send it back to the agency, rethink it in a non-arrative way, and make a new decision,” he said.
