he Biden administration’s March 13 decision to approve the Willow project, a multibillion-dollar oil-drilling development in the Alaskan wilderness, may have come as a shock to those accustomed to Joe Biden’s criticism of the oil and gas industry. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. In the past two years, unforeseen circumstances—including energy prices and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—have nudged the Administration to work with oil companies. The Willow project, spearheaded by ConocoPhillips, is just the latest development in the Biden Administration’s evolving relations with the
