On March 14, 2023, Trustees for Alaska filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ Willow project in Alaska.[1] The $8 billion project, approved on March 13, opens three new drilling areas in Alaska’s North Slope and is expected to produce about 600 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a coalition of environmental and Indigenous groups, requested that the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska reverse the administration’s approval because the federal government had not considered the project’s climate risks and harm to wildlife. The lawsuit claims that the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) approval of the Willow project did not take the required "hard look" under the National Environmental Policy Act. They also claimed that BLM violated provisions of the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, procedural law, and other federal statutes. It also alleges that the Biden administration’s environmental review did not address all concerns raised by Judge Sharon Gleason when she blocked the project in 2021.

A similar lawsuit was filed by Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council on March 14, 2023, claiming that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries had failed to consider the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on two different species of seal.[2]

[1] https://trustees.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-03-Groups-take-Biden-administration-to-court-over-illegal-approval-of-massive-ConocoPhillips-Willow-proposal.pdf

[2] https://earthjustice.org/press/2023/conservation-groups-sue-to-stop-the-willow-oil-project-in-alaskas-western-arctic