Alaska Ruling Shows Big Oil’s Uphill Battle in Climate-Fears Era

摘要

Even the climate-conscious Biden administration supported ConocoPhillips’s $6 billion oil development on Alaska’s Northern Slope, but that couldn’t stop a judge from throwing it in limboon environmental grounds.U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason’s decision to rescind the Trump administration’s approval of the project is a “surprise” given that in May the current government defended the projectin court, RBC Capital Markets analyst Scott Hanold said in a note Thursday.The setback for ConocoPhillips highlights how difficult it’s become for Western oil producers to seek growth in a world gripped by an unprecedented wave of heat, droughts, floods andwildfires blamed on man-made climate change. Investors, governments, lawmakers and courts are increasingly embracing concerns that in the past had been more typical ofenvironmental activists.