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March 13 (UPI) -- The White House on Monday approved ConocoPhillips' Willow oil project on the North Slope of Alaska while moving to reduce the overall footprint of the project. The Biden administration opted to consent to Conoco's plans in Alaska but denied two of five drill sites and called on Conoco to give up rights to 68,000 acres worth of leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that it acquired in the 1990s.
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The company was nevertheless upbeat about the decision to drill for oil in the northernmost U.S. state.
"This was the right decision for Alaska and our nation," said Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO.
The U.S. Interior Department said the plan fits with a national policy of energy security and subsistence activities, ConocoPhillips said in response to a federal decision on the long-awaited project.
New drilling in the North Slope could yield as much as 614 million barrels of oil over the next three decades, helping Alaska reverse a production decline attributed to field maturation that began in the 1980s.
Once churning out around 2 million barrels per day, Alaska's output is now closer to 440,000 bpd.
The White House hinted that approval was coming as recently as February. Addressing concerns at the time, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said energy policy seeks to strike a balance between addressing climate change and finding the energy that the world needs.
President Joe Biden had been reluctant to open new federal lands to drilling, issuing a moratorium on new offshore activity as one of his first acts of office. While the administration has said that oil and gas will remain part of the energy mix, Biden simultaneously took 2.9 million acres of U.S. territory in the far Arctic north off the table for future oil and gas drilling before announcing the decision for Conoco.
The Sierra Club environmental advocacy group was not impressed.
"The harmful effects of this decision cannot be overstated," the group said. "This project has the potential to entirely undo the clean energy progress we've made, lock us into fossil fuel drilling for another 30 years and threaten the communities and wildlife who rely on these Alaskan landscapes."
Given concerns over the slowing pace of production gains in U.S. shale, meanwhile, Conoco said Willow could produce as much as 180,000 barrels of oil per day and bring in as much as $17 billion in new revenue to the federal and state governments, as well as local communities.
Declaring victory, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, said it's time for Alaskans to make the most of the decision.
"Now, it's on us here in Alaska to make sure that we make the best of this opportunity -- that we use the revenues and jobs and economic opportunity from this project to make investments in the future of Alaska," she said.
