U.S./Canada
Article
November 2025
World Oil contributing editor Bill Head argues it’s time to “unleash” Alaska once again—reviving cost-share research, accelerating exploration and embracing new subsurface technologies. From Permanent Fund history to modern imaging advances, this column examines why frontier basins may be poised for a resurgence.
News
November 19, 2025
Alaska oil output is set for its biggest annual jump since the 1980s. New EIA data show North Slope production climbing 13% in 2026, driven by fast-ramping barrels from ConocoPhillips’ Nuna project and Santos/Repsol’s Pikka Phase 1 development.
News
November 14, 2025
The Trump administration has finalized its rollback of drilling restrictions across the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, reopening vast Arctic areas with an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of resources.
News
November 10, 2025
Glenfarne Alaska LNG and Baker Hughes have signed definitive agreements to advance the Alaska LNG Project, with Baker Hughes providing key compression and power equipment and making a strategic investment in the development.
News
November 06, 2025
ConocoPhillips has increased the projected cost of its Willow development on Alaska’s North Slope to as much as $9 billion, citing inflation and higher construction expenses. First oil is expected in early 2029, marking a key update to one of the largest U.S. Arctic energy projects.
News
September 24, 2024
The two countries have overlapping claims to the seabed north of Alaska, Yukon and Northwest Territories, which is thought to contain significant oil reserves. The Arctic is also a region that has become increasingly accessible and has drawn greater interest from Russia and China.
News
December 22, 2023
The so-called Extended Continental Shelf covers about 1 million square kilometers (386,100 square miles), predominantly in the Arctic and Bering Sea, an area of increasing strategic importance where Canada and Russia also have claims.
News
February 02, 2023
The Biden administration telegraphed it could support a scaled-back drilling plan at ConocoPhillips’s proposed Willow project in northwest Alaska, even as it cited “substantial concerns” with the oil development and warned of further restrictions to limit its impact on wildlife and the climate.
News
January 04, 2023
The proposed carbon storage hub would be connected to a transportation line that would initially gather captured CO2 from an anticipated 14 oil sands facilities in the Fort McMurray, Christina Lake and Cold Lake regions.
Article
November 2021
Different answers
News
August 19, 2021
The Trump administration’s approval of a ConocoPhillips oil field project on Alaska’s Northern Slope was rescinded by a federal judge who said it failed to adequately protect polar bears and didn’t properly consider the effects on climate change.
News
June 02, 2021
Under an Interior Department order issued Tuesday, the agency is temporarily halting action on nine leases spanning more than 400,000 acres (161,870 hectares) of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while it conducts a fresh environmental analysis of the program.
News
May 27, 2021
The Justice Department is defending the Trump administration’s approval of a massive ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. project in federal court, over the objections of environmentalists who say the government didn’t adequately consider the venture’s effect on polar bears and the climate.
News
May 21, 2021
Ministers gathering in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik for a meeting of the Arctic Council last week weren’t due to discuss security. But the issue dominated conversations on the sidelines after Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov declared ahead of the summit that the Arctic “is our land and our waters.”
Article
March 2021
Well, it didn’t take any time at all for the Biden Administration to show its true colors in dealing with oil and gas matters in Alaska.
News
February 26, 2021
Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation strongly disputed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcement that it failed with respect to its permit application to conduct seismic studies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the company said in a statement.
News
January 28, 2021
In the days before taking office, President Biden promised to unify the country. Then, in his first order of business, promptly alienated Alaska and other states that rely on energy development to keep the lights on in their communities.
News
January 20, 2021
“You can write a lot of executive orders, but an executive order doesn’t get you past go,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said on his last full day leading the Interior Department. “They still have to run through the gauntlet of the law.”
News
January 07, 2021
Amid low crude prices, fears about a backlash from the public and the prospect of regulatory uncertainty, just two oil companies placed bids on leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain: Knik Arm Services LLC and Regenerate Alaska Inc.
News
January 06, 2021
The Bureau of Land Management was set to begin opening sealed bids for 10-year leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain Wednesday afternoon, less than a day after a federal judge rejected environmental groups’ pleas to halt the auction.
News
January 06, 2021
The decision is a victory for the administration, which has been racing to issue oil leases in the refuge’s coastal plain before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
