Biden approving massive Alaskan drilling project. Betrayal or just sound politics?

Politics & Elections
1

The Biden administration has approved the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska despite a campaign pledge to allow no new permits on federal lands.

I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about this during the lengthy negotiations, but I’m disappointed. With global climate change at or near the point of irreversibility, what purpose does it serve to disrupt even more unspoiled federal land just to perpetuate technologies that should be on their way out?

So, has Biden betrayed common sense environmental leadership? Or does this action make sense in a grander scheme I’m too dense to comprehend?

2

As I understand it, there are currently 9,000 permits that have been approved but not used. Is this just going to make it 9,001?

If so: “Meh”.

3

This part of the CNN article is important:

The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil, though that oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.

So, close a bi-partisan deal for a project that is likely to be tied-up in the courts for a while with rewards (and risks) years in the future, and remove some present-day criticisms from the opposition about jobs in the energy sector. Yep, sounds like politics.

4

I believe it will lower the cost of fuel and that is more valued at the moment than the increased emissions.

5

It’s a political move by the Biden Administration, which doesn’t want to be an easy target in the run-up to the 2024 election if gas prices surge again.

At the same time, the Administration is placing a huge chunk of Alaskan land off-limits to drilling. From the N.Y. Times:

"The Interior Department said Mr. Biden will designate about 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean near shore in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska as indefinitely off limits for future oil and gas leasing.

So in theory, everyone should be happy. In reality, both environmentalists and the G.O.P. now have more fuel for attacks on Biden.

6

Another part of the CNN article that’s important is:

The administration felt it was constrained legally and had few options to cancel or significantly curtail the project – which was initially approved by the Trump administration. The administration determined that legally, courts wouldn’t have allowed them to fully reject the project, two government sources familiar with the approval told CNN.

Or from the Business Insider article:

A Biden administration official insisted that the government’s hands were tied by leases granted to ConocoPhillips by prior administrations. The official noted that the administration is limiting drilling to three of the five proposed sites and that the company will give up 68,000 acres of existing leases.

“The company has a legal right to those leases,” the official told Insider in a statement. “The Department’s options are limited when there are legal contracts in place. Courts would not allow a full denial of the project.”

In other words, the choice was not “keep promise to not approve drilling or break it” as the Business Insider headline insinuates but “approve this project now in a scaled-back form, or be ordered to do so (and possibly the full project) by a court later.” Unless the people pushing the “broken promise” narrative are sub silentio calling the Biden administration officials/sources liars.

Including that in the article and then barreling ahead as if it’s not there and the Biden administration made its decision as a wholly political calculus with no legal aspect is IMO disingenuous. Call the sources liars. Or trot out another legal talking head (I’m sure the environmental groups planning to sue about the approval have more than one) expressly opining that the government had a good chance of winning in court.

Maybe the Biden administration should have denied the permits and fought ConocoPhillips in court even strongly believing they’d lose, which would also have been politics; in this case, signaling to the oil industry on one side and environmentalists on the other that Biden really, really means no more permits. And the DOJ probably has more attorneys than ConocoPhillips. And there’s always a chance your assessment is wrong and you win in court.

However, most potential litigants who are fairly sure they’re going to lose in court settle out of court, which – especially in getting the project down from five sites to three – is essentially what the Biden administration did. And then, if they’re prudent, they make changes and take countermeasures to avoid the situation arising again, which the Biden administration also did:

The White House on Monday made the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing. The administration will also later announce new rules to protect more than 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling.

In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.

7

Even if this were true, it wouldn’t do so for many years down the road. And is that really a goal worth sacrificing Alaskan wilderness?

If gas prices surge, and undecided voters blame Biden, I don’t think they’ll be swayed by something that might help in a few years.

Thank you for reading more carefully than I did! Simplistically, I now feel like I can blame Trump for this at least as much as Biden.

8

George H. W. Bush raised taxes after his famous promise “Read my lips. No. New. Taxes.” Well he did raise taxes after making a deal with with the Democrats and so tanked his re-election in 1992. I wonder if this broken promise will have the same impact on Biden 2024?

9

What “broken promise”?

Are you saying that the Biden administration should have denied all permits knowing that it would result in a prolonged and expensive legal battle that they would probably lose and which could result in more drilling than the approach they chose? Or that they are lying about the legal restrictions they claim prevent them from denying all the drilling permits in toto?

Or are you just saying that Biden opponents will just keep pushing a misleading “broken promises” narrative in order to hobble Biden’s re-election chances?

10

I’m saying denying the permits was a possible choice but doing what the administration did was certainly a reasonable choice and likely the most reasonable choice. I don’t think the administration sources were lying, and I don’t think many will say they were outright lying. But environmentalists fighting tooth-and-nail to keep as much oil in the ground as possible, and threatening to sue to block the permits, are likely of the mindset that you fight in court not just until a judge orders you to comply but until you run out of appeals.

To be fair, the environmental groups seem to be preparing to litigate, so there’s no hypocrisy on their part. Of course, the permits they’ll be fighting are for three sites because the administration approved only three sites instead of five, so the administration has effectively limited the down-side loss from their litigation.

Definitely! The CNN article is mostly balanced and the political considerations were likely part of the administration’s calculus alongside the legal considerations. But the Business Insider article is unabashedly bashing Biden with the tiny fig-leaf of including the administration sources but then not addressing what they said.

11

Actually, I meant to address those questions to @Saint_Cad using your text for context. But thank you for your considered response.

12

I have to say that my RW conspiracy theory coworker actually praised Biden for this. So yeah, this was clearly a political ploy on Bidens part. It’s called compromising, its what grownups do.

13

Agree. If no one got everything they wanted, it’s probably an effective agreement.

14

If he promised to not issue permits for drilling and he ended up giving a permit for drilling as a compromise then yes, it is a broken promise in almost the exact same way Bush broke his promise about no new taxes. And THAT is my point. It doesn’t matter if it was a good or bad compromise or if technically it was a promise or not. Maybe Biden should have made the courts force him to open drilling or maybe not but that is not the issue I am bringing up. Bush was perceived by the voting public as breaking a promise that got him elected and that contributed to him losing re-election. My question is: will this perception of Biden breaking a promise that got him elected contribute to him losing re-election in 2024 similarly to Bush in 1992?

15

If someone like Sanders runs a primary challenge from the left, it definitely could. Progressives who champion the perfect over the good might stay home rather than vote for someone they see as having broken a promise to protect the environment.

I’m not thrilled with this outcome, either, but if the alternative was a protracted court battle that he’d probably lose anyway, then it looks like a fairly savvy compromise.

16

And so was Bush’s but it still got him pilloried by the Republicans

17

I really doubt it. How many people are going to remember this Alaska oil deal that is far away, come election time, versus how many people remembered the famous “Read My Lips. No New Taxes” tagline with their wallets in their pocket/purse every day? Maybe a few environmentalists, but on the whole, I would guess not many.

Conservatives would like to beat Biden over the head with the whole Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco, but even that has lost a lot of traction. I don’t think this oil project deal will be remembered, either.

18

I sure hope so – but as we saw in 2016, it doesn’t take many non-votes to turn the election. A few hundred Wisconsinites writing in Sanders as a protest vote could put a Pub in the White House.

19

It doesn’t matter. Republicans don’t pillory Democrats for what they do-They pillory Democrats no matter what they do. Democrats are Automatically Wrong.

20

Yes, but the concern isn’t about the inevitable GOP mudslinging machine. It’s about, in a general election where Biden is the Democratic nominee, people who’ll vote for Biden because he’s better than the GOP alternative versus potential voters who won’t vote, or will vote for the Green Party nominee, because Biden isn’t perfect on the environment. Because he isn’t.

Whether it’s actually changed the outcome of a presidential election or not, there’s a perception that there’s a significant faction of potential Democratic/progressive/leftish voters who won’t vote for the Democratic Party nominee, and thus will split the non-right vote and make way for the GOP candidate, because the nominee is not absolutely ideal.

The “Democrats are Automatically Wrong” GOP rhetoric is irrelevant because this faction is not fooled by it, at least insofar as they support their dissatisfaction with the nominee by pointing to actual instances of him/her not deciding or acting exactly as they would. And “breaking a promise” to not issue any more permits for fossil fuel extraction in the Arctic is precisely the sort of thing that generates “(s)he’s not really on our side” feelings and rhetoric.