How Murkowski helped move Biden on Willow - E&ENews

[GGoss]

How Murkowski helped move Biden on Willow - E&ENews

For nearly two years, Sen. Lisa Murkowski has played the long game on expanding drilling in Alaska: She has voted for many of President Joe Biden’s key nominees and legislative priorities while relentlessly bending the ears of top White House officials at every opportunity.

All that work paid has paid off in a big way.

On Monday, the Interior Department, at Biden’s direction, announced it would move forward with a scaled-back, but still expansive, plan for energy extraction in the Alaska Republican’s home state.

The massive ConocoPhillips endeavor, called the Willow project, will at its peak produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day across 68,000 acres inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Advocates say it will be an economic game changer for the state and even the nation, while environmentalists called it Biden’s single biggest climate betrayal since taking office.

Murkowski can take much of the credit for the result. In an interview with E&E News on Monday afternoon, the Republican said she was under no illusion that Biden was influenced, at least in part, by politics, where he weighed the backlash he knew he’d receive from green activists and members of his own party against voters concerned about rising energy costs and reliance on foreign oil.

Link: https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-murkowski-helped-move-biden-on-willow/

[NewHendoLib]

1. Ugh

[Haggard Celine]

2. It's all about getting the bills passed.

Sometimes they have to promise certain things a Senator might want in his state in order to get cooperation for Democratic bills, or at least to break filibusters. It's not pretty sometimes, but it's what you have to do sometimes. Would we rather see some bills pass or no bills pass?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I would rather see the planet not warming this fast. nt

[GPV]

4. Hear, hear!

[Haggard Celine]

5. I'd like that too, Peggy,

however, we don't have the votes to get anything done on our own. We got a modest environmental bill passed, but even that wouldn't have been passed without making deals. I wish there was a better way, but I don't see it. It's the weakness of democracy. We can't get legislation passed without a lot of people being behind it, so since we don't have a strong majority, we have to make deals. So many still don't believe in climate change that it's hard to carve out a majority, even after all we've seen so far. Reminds me of the Exodus story, how pharaoh's heart was hardened again and again until the worst thing happened, and by then it was too late.

[mvd]

6. Agree, Peggy

I would not have approved the project if I was the President. I realize that there must be a transition to clean energy, but I feel we are losing time. The climate is so different than when even I was younger. There has been virtually no snow this winter where I am in PA. While that alone doesn’t mean extreme climate change, the pattern certainly does. Tons of major and even unprecedented weather events. How are things doing in California? I heard about the flooding.

[GGoss]

7. I'm With You, Peg

[Demsrule86]

8. It is way less than what they wanted and we are not close to running this country on renewables.

Biden will work to get us there. Sometimes you have to make deals. that is how politics works...it can't be all or nothing because you end up with nothing.

[W_HAMILTON]

13. "It can't be all or nothing because you end up with nothing" -- amen!

Say it again, louder, for the Green Party progressive types in the back.

How they haven't learned their lesson yet after going to this same failed tactic over and over again, it's almost like they don't want to learn and instead want to continue to be a useful tool to hurt Democrats that Republicans are all too willing to use (and fund *cough cough*).

[Demsrule86]

16. You said it better than I could...absolutely right...thanks

[betsuni]

19. +1

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. This won't change that.

We will be dependent on oil for many years. This Willow decision won't slow down or speed up our usage of oil or our dumping of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere.

On the other hand, Pres Biden's restrictions on 16 million acres can help the environment.

[dsp3000]

9. Perfect is the enemy of good. Biden has done great for the environment.

To me this is an acceptable concession due to the volatile energy conditions we have right now with Russia and OPEC. Like it or not, we're still in a bridging the gap phase to transition between gas vehicles and EV's. Until there are more EV's than gas vehicles on the road, we still need to be producing oil domestically and safely

[JCMach1]

10. Going to be a pragmatist here and say oil will flow regardless

It will lower our energy burden by a small amount in an area that already likely doomed by current level of warming.

Meanwhile, India is buying up all of Russia's oil on the cheap with no consequences.

We should be sanctioning Modi's government yesterday for this.

F&$k big oil, but renewable transition will take decades more.

[jalan48]

11. Is it Murkowski or is it really ConocoPhillips?

[W_HAMILTON]

12. It's apparently also a great majority of citizens in Alaska, so it can be all of the above.

[jalan48]

15. It's an oil drilling state so more money for the folks who live there and for the shareholder's

of ConocoPhillips who don't live there. Not so good for the planet though, but our kids and grand kids can worry about that later.
Party on.

[W_HAMILTON]

21. This one project won't change the planet's fate...

...but Biden's overall very much pro-environmental policies and global leadership on climate change might.

[ripcord]

14. "I will not allow new oil drilling on public land" Joe Biden

[Phoenix61]

18. The leases were already issued.

“Interior Secretary Deb Haaland referred to the project in a video statement on Twitter as a “difficult and complex issue” involving leases issued by prior administrations.

“As a result, we had limited decision space, but we focused on how to reduce the project’s footprint and minimise its impacts to people and to wildlife,” said Haaland, who had opposed Willow as a New Mexico congresswoman before becoming interior secretary.”

[betsuni]

20. +1