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| In Pristine Alaska, an Oil Giant Prepares to Drill for Decades | In Pristine Alaska, an Oil Giant Prepares to Drill for Decades |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| On the snowy tundra at the northernmost tip of the United States, more than two dozen yellow dump trucks wait on a glistening ice pad. | On the snowy tundra at the northernmost tip of the United States, more than two dozen yellow dump trucks wait on a glistening ice pad. |
| It’s been just days since the Biden administration approved an $8 billion project to drill for oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s single largest expanse of untouched wilderness. But the oil giant ConocoPhillips is already in motion, massing equipment and flying in workers and provisions to this vast frozen flatland 250 miles above the Arctic Circle. | It’s been just days since the Biden administration approved an $8 billion project to drill for oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the nation’s single largest expanse of untouched wilderness. But the oil giant ConocoPhillips is already in motion, massing equipment and flying in workers and provisions to this vast frozen flatland 250 miles above the Arctic Circle. |
| In Nuiqsut, a village of about 500 people and the closest town to the site of the drilling project, the only hotel is booked solid. It’s the Kuukpik Hotel, a row of metal trailers that also hosts the cafeteria that serves as the only restaurant in town — in fact, the only one for hundreds of miles. Sitting in the cafeteria on a recent Wednesday (“Steak Night” at the Kuukpik) oil workers from California, Oklahoma and other parts of Alaska said they were excited by the years of employment promised by the project, known as Willow. | In Nuiqsut, a village of about 500 people and the closest town to the site of the drilling project, the only hotel is booked solid. It’s the Kuukpik Hotel, a row of metal trailers that also hosts the cafeteria that serves as the only restaurant in town — in fact, the only one for hundreds of miles. Sitting in the cafeteria on a recent Wednesday (“Steak Night” at the Kuukpik) oil workers from California, Oklahoma and other parts of Alaska said they were excited by the years of employment promised by the project, known as Willow. |
| “I can probably retire on it,” one man said. | “I can probably retire on it,” one man said. |
| The boomtown mind-set stands in stark contrast to the remoteness. People stopped by Nuiqsut’s one-room post office to chat, then hustled back to their pickups to avoid the whipping, frosty winds. For fun, teenagers on snowmobiles drove along empty streets, towing younger kids tethered to sleds behind them. The mayor headed to the small airport to pick up the medicine and supplies that arrive once a day on a six-seater from Deadhorse. | The boomtown mind-set stands in stark contrast to the remoteness. People stopped by Nuiqsut’s one-room post office to chat, then hustled back to their pickups to avoid the whipping, frosty winds. For fun, teenagers on snowmobiles drove along empty streets, towing younger kids tethered to sleds behind them. The mayor headed to the small airport to pick up the medicine and supplies that arrive once a day on a six-seater from Deadhorse. |