June 28, 2022
The Honorable Deb Haaland, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20240
CC: Brenda Mallory, Council on Environmental Quality Chair; Adrian Saenz, White House Office of Public Engagement; Gina McCarthy, White House National Climate Advisor; Ali Zaidi, Deputy White House National Climate Advisor
Dear Secretary Haaland:
I am writing to express Patagonia’s strong opposition to the Willow Master Development Project in America’s Western Arctic.
The Willow Project is the largest oil extraction project currently proposed on U.S. federal lands. This unnecessary production would cause devastating, long-term destruction to the health of the planet and the Western Arctic ecosystem, which supports caribou, geese, loons, salmon, polar bears and bowhead whales, along with Indigenous communities who rely on these traditional food sources.
The Willow Project calls for construction of up to five drill pads with up to 50 wells on each pad, a road system, an airstrip, pipelines, a gravel mine and more. Burning the oil produced from this project would release more than 260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the emissions from 66 new coal-fired power plants per year.
Patagonia respectfully asks the Bureau of Land Management and Biden Administration to require a comprehensive review of the climate and conservation consequences of the Willow Project. Essential to this is ensuring a robust public process that allows time for a diversity and depth of input, especially during busy summer months (and subsistence seasons). We ask that you hold a comment period of 120 days to allow for that input and to ensure permitting decisions are made in accordance with the Administration’s climate and conservation goals.
Thank you,
Ryan Gellert
CEO, Patagonia