Democratic Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, who is facing a competitive re-election, was boosted by a ConocoPhillips-funded super PAC after she promoted the company’s controversial oil drilling project now under construction on Alaska's North Slope wetlands.
ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion Willow Project, located on federally protected lands, was approved by the Biden administration on March 13, 2023 over the objections of environmental advocates. The consumption of oil extracted from the project over the next three decades is projected to emit 277 million tons of carbon dioxide, an amount roughly equal to four percent of U.S. annual emissions, according to a post by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Environmental group Earthjustice has called the massive drilling project a “carbon bomb,” and said that continued oil and gas extraction from sites like Willow will release enough greenhouse gases to make it impossible for the planet to reach the target set out by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): halving emissions by 2030, to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. A blog post about the Willow Project last year from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) called the project “climate sabotage” while highlighting the potential ecological damage of the drilling operation to the region.
