The New York Times reports:

A federal judge in Alaska on Wednesday blocked construction permits for an expansive oil drilling project on the state’s North Slope that was designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years.

The multibillion-dollar plan, known as Willow, by the oil giant ConocoPhillips had been approved by the Trump administration and legally backed by the Biden administration. Environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal government had failed to take into account the effects that drilling would have on wildlife and that the burning of the oil would have on global warming.

A federal judge has agreed.

In her opinion, Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for Alaska wrote that when the Trump administration permitted the project, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management’s exclusion of greenhouse gas emissions in its analysis of the environmental effects of the project was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The Willow project has become a political and environmental lightning rod not only for its vast size and its potential ecological damage, but also because the administration of President Biden — which has pledged to pivot the country away from fossil fuels in an ambitious effort to fight climate change — had chosen to legally support it.

In May, the Biden administration drew the wrath of environmental advocates when it filed a brief in the U.S. District Court for Alaska defending the Trump administration’s decision to greenlight the Willow project. The Interior Department said then that the Trump administration’s decision had complied with environmental rules in place at the time.

Environmental groups saw in Wednesday’s decision a vindication of their strong criticism of the Biden administration’s decision not to oppose the drilling plan. [Continue reading…]