Environmental Integrity Project

• The Role of Minerals and Oil in President Trump’s Desire to Seize Greenland

  Although he did not mention it during his campaign, since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the U.S. should buy or seize Greenland – the largest island in the world, and part of the Kingdom of Denmark. A U.S. Geological Survey study estimates that there are 31 billion barrels of oil in eastern Greenland, and beneath the ice are also rare earth metals needed for electric cars, batteries, and computers, as well as uranium. We talk to two Greenland experts, Paul Bierman, a professor at the University of Vermont (pictured) and Anne Merrild, who grew up on the island and is now a professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, about what role minerals and oil are playing in the politics – and potential take-over – of Greenland. Local elections on March 11 may help decide whether prohibitions remain on the extraction of oil and gas and uranium on the island.

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• Oil Veteran is Skeptical of Republican Plans to Produce More Oil by Fast-Tracking Permit Approvals

  When President Trump takes office, one of the first things he is expected to do is to accelerate the approval of permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land. But this is likely to have little to no impact on the production of fuel from federal lands. Why? Because there are already more than 6,000 approved drilling permits and millions of acres of leases owned by oil and gas companies on public lands that are not being used. We explore this curious phenomenon with an oil industry veteran: Mark Finley, former chief U.S. economist with BP who is now an independent expert and fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

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• Billions of Dollars in Taxpayer Subsidies Support Carbon Capture. Is it a Massive Waste?

  One of President Biden’s signature achievements to combat climate change has been the approval of billions of dollars in federal subsidies to encourage carbon capture and storage. It sounds good: capturing carbon dioxide from industry, then piping it underground so it can’t heat the planet. But most of these projects don’t really help the climate. They provide taxpayer money to oil and gas companies, who use captured carbon to force more oil and gas out of the ground. We interview an expert on carbon capture, MIT Professor Charles Harvey, who was the scientific advisor to a pioneering carbon capture company who discovered, firsthand, that the technology was not economically viable. We ask Professor Harvey: What would happen if the incoming president, Donald Trump, a climate change denier, followed the advice of his allies at Project 2025 and killed all federal funding for carbon capture?

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• Why Drilling For Oil in the Alaskan Arctic is So Controversial

  Last year, environmentalists criticized the Biden Administration’s decision to approve the Willow Project, a proposal by ConocoPhillips to produce up to 600 million barrels of oil on the North Slope over 30 years. Not far away, Australian company Santos is planning a similar proposal called the Pikka Project, which would produce about 400 million barrels over 30 years. That project has gotten much less attention than Willow in the Lower 48. Philip Wight, an environmental historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, explains the context behind these projects and explains why companies are still drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, even as oil production has boomed in other states. He also details how climate change is affecting the industry and Alaska as a whole, including causing some bizarre issues for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which delivers oil from the North Slope to refineries and export terminals.

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• Debunking Trump’s Claims That “Drill Baby Drill” Will Lower Consumer Prices

  President Trump won election this month in part by convincing voters that he could bring down consumer prices for groceries, gasoline, and other products by expanding oil production. We interview an expert on the oil industry and climate change, Professor Robert Kaufmann of Boston University, who debunks this claim. Petroleum is traded on a global market, Kaufmann explains, and so one president of any one nation cannot unilaterally bring down oil and gasoline prices – because other countries, like Saudi Arabia, could cut back production even if U.S. companies boosted oil production. Kaufmann also argues that President Biden’s signature legislation on the climate, the Inflation Reduction Act, could survive Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and attacks on green programs because so many of the clean energy projects the law funds are located in Republican districts, whose representatives won’t want to lose local funding and jobs.

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