Ninth Circuit Deals Setback to Willow Oil Project in Alaska
June 13, 2025 | Source: Friends of the Earth
SAN FRANCISCO – The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided today that the Department of the Interior unlawfully approved ConocoPhillips’s massive Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska’s Western Arctic. This reverses in part an earlier ruling by the Alaska District Court that allowed the Willow project to proceed and marks the groups’ second legal victory reversing unlawful approvals of Willow.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) must now reconsider whether Willow should proceed as proposed.
The Ninth Circuit agreed with environmentalists that BLM’s approval of Willow in March 2023 violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law. The Court concluded that BLM acted irrationally when it approved the Willow project. And while the Ninth Circuit stopped short of vacating the existing approval—allowing the project to continue for now—BLM must take seriously its obligation to reconsider its approval of the Willow project.
If permitted to continue, Willow would release carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to that of driving two million extra cars for the next 30 years.
The Willow lawsuit was brought by Earthjustice on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA, with the Center for Biological Diversity and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The Court also ruled today on a second lawsuit, filed by Trustees for Alaska, challenging Willow on behalf of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and others.