The United States President Joe Biden’s administration on March 13 formally approved the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
Key facts
- The US Government has imposed limits on oil and gas drilling in 16 million acres of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.
- The $8bn Willow project would be one of the biggest oil projects in the country in decades.
- Environmental groups and some Native residents fear the oil drilling project may have an impact on climate and damage wildlife.
- The reserve is a 23-million acre area on Alaska’s North Slope that was set aside a century ago for future oil production.
- The US Bureau of Land Management estimates that the project would produce up to 278 million metric tons of CO2e over its 30-year lifetime. It is the equivalent of adding more than two million cars to roads in the US.
- CO2e is a unit used to express the climate impact of all greenhouse gases together as if they were all emitted as carbon dioxide.
