U.S. To Open Alaska Oil Field; UK Won't Follow Suit

It would be the biggest new oil field in decades. It could supply as much as 2%c of all the oil needed by the US. And it would be large enough by itself to make a difference to the global price, dealing yet another blow to Vladimir Putin’s collapsing war machine in Ukraine.

Photo Insert: Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project in Alaska has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5% of the US’s total energy needs.

President Joe Biden is set to approve the Willow Project, a vast fossil fuel development in Alaska. Despite opposition, Biden has decided that the US, and the world, still needs oil.

“If climate-friendly Biden can approve new energy projects, why can’t we do the same in the UK? No one could possibly accuse Biden of being a climate change-denying reactionary. And yet in the US, unlike most of Europe, the debate about energy still has some vague connection to reality,” Matthew Lynn wrote for The Telegraph.

It recognizes that it will take a while and cost a lot to switch to renewables. In the meantime, you will need oil and gas – and you might as well produce it yourself rather than buy it from Saudi Arabia.

With plenty of reserves available in this country, perhaps it is time the UK learnt a lesson from Biden – and started to open up some new oil and gas fields of our own.

President Biden is not ignoring climate change or in hock to the oil industry. He is spending so much money on putting the US at the forefront of the shift to green energy that every other country in the world is complaining about the support he is offering. And yet, despite that, he is about to approve the biggest new oil field in years.

Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project in Alaska has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5% of the US’s total energy needs.

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