OPINION: Alaska’s Willow project isn’t as big a deal as its detractors — or its supporters — think

The headline in the New York Times Sunday edition on April 9 read: “Alaska’s Pristine Wilderness Opens to Oil Boom.”

Really? Give me a break.

To anyone who has lived and worked in northern Alaska, as I have, the hysteria over the Willow oil project is both amusing and troubling.

To be fair, the actual story in the NYT wasn’t bad. In fact, it was balanced in representing the conflicts, pro and con, felt by people in Nuiqsut, the closest Inupiat village to Willow. The reporter actually went to Nuiqsut, too. The portrayal of the gritty Nuiqsut Hotel, now for oil workers, was dead-on. And Wednesday as Steak Night at the Nuiqsut Hotel? For anyone who has worked in North Slope camps, that rings a bell.

Still, the headline in an article sets the tone, and it’s what people remember.

Here are some facts for the headline writers and, really, the editors: Pristine wilderness? The part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, where Willow was discovered has seen drilling and industrial activity since the 1950s. Willow is just eight miles west of GMT-2, a small oil field recently brought into production. That is about eight miles west of GMT-1, another small field. Ten miles east is Alpine, a big field. Pipeline roads and utilities now connect all of these. There are big parts of the NPR-A further west and south that might, plausibly, be called pristine, but not the area around Willow.

NPR-A is a petroleum reserve, right? It’s not a wildlife refuge like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. NPR-A, with its 23 million acres, was set aside in 1923 by President Warren Harding as a strategic oil reserve for the U.S. Navy, though no oil was found for decades.

The first exploration came after World War II and was led by the Navy, and later by the U.S. Geological Survey. Dozens of wells were drilled, but the results were dismal — although the Barrow gas field, which now supplies the community of Utqiagvik with clean-burning fuel, was discovered.

No commercial oil finds were made until recent years, those being GMT-1 and GMT-2 and now Willow, the largest. Willow is actually of modest size compared with the really big producing oil fields to the east, like Prudhoe Bay, that are on state land.

Doomsayers would have us believe that Willow will unleash fleets of drill rigs and bulldozers moving through the reserve, but there are reasons to doubt this. To be sure, the new infrastructure being built for Willow will make finds in the immediate area more likely to be developed. And there may be other finds like Willow.

On the other hand, the geology may not be so cooperative. Many geologists, including those with the federal government, believe NPR-A is more prone to natural gas than oil. This is often a red flag for explorers, because there’s no way now to market gas.

Also, even oil deposits found in these areas are often “gassy,” meaning they have more gas than oil, which can create problems in producing the oil. ConocoPhllips is already wrestling with gas-handling at GMT-1. This may be the case at GMT-2 as well and possibly Willow.

Interestingly, the better prospects for oil may actually lie elsewhere, such as in the mostly state lands south along the Colville River, because of geology. This is where Santos, Ltd. and Repsol are developing the new Pikka find. More explorers, even ConocoPhillips, are heading this way – south, not west into NPR-A.

Federal policies also play a role. Basically, restrictions on exploring in the NPR-A were tightened under President Barack Obama and not really eased that much under President Donald Trump. More recently, President Joe Biden ordered more restrictions at the time that he approved the Willow project.

All this said, there are definitely parts of the NPR-A, including near Willow, that deserve to be protected. These include coastal wetlands and particularly the area around Teshekpuk Lake, a large freshwater body. The coastal area around the lake is prime for waterfowl breeding that support some of North America’s greatest bird migrations.

To their credit, every president since Bill Clinton has protected this region, even Trump. Some even argue that Trump’s policies indirectly tightened the restrictions.

What’s remarkable about this is that the coastal region of NPR-A is one area of the reserve that does have high oil potential. That’s because of the regional geology and the presence of the Barrow Arch, a broad regional geological structure that encourages the formation of oil reservoirs including those found further east near Prudhoe Bay.

This isn’t the case in the lands around Willow, however. Oil has and will be found, but the area ranks lower in potential than the coastal lands to the north.

That the protections of coastal wetlands and Teshekpuk Lake have held up despite the high oil potential is one case where oil has been played off against the environment and the environment has won, even under Trump.

People deserve credit for this. National conservation groups should share in that. The federal government’s policy in protecting the NPR-A coast came after a vigorous national campaign mounted by conservation groups.

Most Alaskans have never realized it, but this effort was second only to conservationists’ campaign with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

To sum up, expending emotional energy over Willow is misplaced. It is better directed at other things that really matter, like speeding the needed transition to cleaner fuels. We should focus on cleaning up plastic and other garbage in the oceans, too.

Tim Bradner is publisher of the Alaska Legislative Digest and Alaska Economic Report.

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