Biden okays major Arctic oil drilling project, angering environmentalists

 The Biden administration approved one of the largest oil developments on federal land Monday, giving a win to Alaskan industry and its congressional allies despite protests that the project would undermine U.S. efforts to phase out fossil fuels worldwide.

Opponents hoped President Biden would reject energy giant ConocoPhillips’s multibillion-dollar drilling project, called Willow, on Alaska’s North Slope. But facing the prospect of having such a decision overturned in court, the administration agreed to let the oil company build three pads in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the nation’s largest expanse of public land, according to a federal Record of Decision posted Monday.During the 2020 campaign,

 Biden had pledged to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” and environmental activists argued that the project would undercut his lofty climate pledges...MORE