US oil extraction plans are set to release five times more CO₂ than remains in the country’s 1.5°C carbon budget.
To the dismay of green activists, the Biden administration approved the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska in March 2023. The field will produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day and create as many as 1,800 jobs, and will require an estimated investment of $8bn from lease-owner ConocoPhillips to become operational.
Prior to the project’s approval, President Joe Biden said he was inclined to block the Willow project – but he was told by his lawyers that in such an instance, ConocoPhillips would most likely sue his administration, and ultimately be able to secure it. Nevertheless, no political excuse can account for the devastating climate environmental impact many now fear the project will unleash: situated in a fragile Arctic environment, Willow will produce enough oil to release 9.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) each year, equivalent to two million gasoline-powered cars.
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At the start of 2023, the Global Carbon Project – a leading organisation of climate scientists who have pioneered carbon budget modelling – estimated that the world could now only emit a further 380Gt of CO₂ to have a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. A US fair share of that remaining budget would be around 15Gt (4.2% of the total, reflecting the US share of the world’s population).
The fossil fuels the US is currently planning to extract from its oil and gas fields will therefore produce five times more CO₂ than exists in the US’s 1.5°C carbon budget. This would scupper both US – and global – ambitions to keep warming at 1.5°C, as outlined at both the COP26 and COP27 climate conferences.
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