Biden administration moves toward approval for major Alaska oil drilling project
Alaskan oil extraction site.
Lowell Georgia | Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday recommended a scaled-down version of a major oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, taking a step toward approving the $8 billion Willow plan that climate groups have long condemned.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management released an environmental analysis that proposes lowering the number of drilling sites from five to three under the project, which is led by ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s largest crude oil producer.
The Biden administration has 30 days to issue a final decision on whether to approve the Willow project in the northernmost part of the state. The Interior emphasized it could select a different option, including taking no action or postponing a ruling about permits to more than one drill site.
The Willow project would produce about 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years and would generate around 278 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to Interior estimates. Environmental advocates argue the plan would undermine the Biden administration’s agenda to curb fossil fuel production and say the project’s emissions would be roughly equivalent to what 66 new coal-fired power plants produce in a year.
The Interior Department said in a statement that it has “substantial concerns” about the Willow project, including its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and its impact to local wildlife in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.
Kristen Miller, executive director of the nonprofit Alaska Wilderness League, called the Willow project a “massive climate disaster” and urged the administration to reverse its decision to advance the plan.
“Our window to act is rapidly closing to avert catastrophic climate change, and this plan only takes us one giant step closer to the edge,” Miller said. “We should be prioritizing ways to preserve this irreplaceable ecosystem, by protecting critical wildlife and subsistence resources and avoiding increased climate pollution.”
Proponents of the Willow project, including the state’s congressional delegation and some Alaska Native tribal governments, say the plan would create more than 2,500 jobs for the Alaska residents, deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for the federal government and boost the country’s domestic energy security.
ConocoPhillips said in a statement that it “welcomes and continues to review” the government’s environmental analysis and said the decision “represents a major milestone in the permitting process.”
“We believe Willow will benefit local communities and enhance American energy security while producing oil in an environmentally and socially responsible manner,” Erec Isaacson, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, said in a statement.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia and the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the administration’s decision to advance the project is an “important step towards reestablishing American energy independence and strengthening American energy security.”
“Alaska has a robust history of contributing to American energy security and this project will position them to continue that legacy,” Manchin said in a statement.
Just after Tesla launched its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package, in China, the country announced that it cracking down on automated driving features with new limitations.
In February, Tesla launched a first version of its “Full Self-Driving” FSD package in China for owners with the latest “Hardware 4.0”, or “HW4”, vehicles.
Most of the features under Tesla’s FSD package have been limited to North America due to Tesla training its system for this market first and due to regulatory limitations in other markets.
Shortly after Tesla launched FSD in China, the American automaker had to pause its rollout due to updated requirements from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Now, MIIT has confirmed that it held a meeting with automotive industry stakeholders yesterday, and it has further clarified the rollout of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features.
CNEV reported on the meeting:
Car companies were asked to refrain from using words like “self-driving,” “autonomous driving,” “smart driving,” “advanced smart driving,” and instead use the term “combined assisted driving” to avoid misleading consumers, according to the minutes of the meeting.
Tesla had already changed the name from ‘Full Self-Driving’ to “Intelligent Assisted Driving” following the launch in China.
Based on a statement from MIIT, the meeting focused on enforcing the previously announced updated requirements that launched right after Tesla introduced FSD in China (translated from Chinese):
The meeting emphasized that automobile manufacturers must deeply understand the requirements of the “Notice”, fully carry out combined driving assistance testing and verification, clarify the system functional boundaries and safety response measures, and must not make exaggerations or false propaganda. They must strictly fulfill their obligation to inform, and truly assume the main responsibility for production consistency and quality safety, and truly improve the safety level of intelligent connected vehicle products.
Regulators want automakers to reduce the frequency of new software updates and instead focus on extended testing before releasing new updates.
The last few months have been quite chaotic for ADAS systems in China. Along with Tesla’s FSD release, several Chinese companies released their systems, including BYD, Xiaomi, and Huawei.
Xiaomi reported a fatal accident in which its ADAS system was active just seconds before the crash, and Tesla owners using FSD racked up thousands of dollars in fines due to FSD making mistakes.
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The Global Payments Company logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
Igor Golovniov | LightRocket | Getty Images
Global Payments shares tumbled 17% on Thursday after the company said it’s buying Worldpay for more than $24 billion while simultaneously selling its Issuer Solutions business to Fidelity National Information Services.
The company said that in acquiring Worldpay, which FIS had purchased in 2019 before later selling a majority stake, it’s expanding its reach and will be able to serve over 6 million customers across more than 175 countries, enabling $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume.
In selling its Issuer Solutions unit to FIS for $13.5 billion, Global Payments is divesting a unit for back-end financial processing that’s long been viewed as a stable provider of growth. In the end, Global Payments is going bigger in providing payments services to merchants, while FIS is focusing on issuer processing.
FIS bought Worldpay for about $35 billion in 2019 and sold most of its stake last year to GTCR.
Global Payments said on Thursday that it obtained committed bridge financing and plans to issue $7.7 billion of debt “to replace the bridge commitment and refinance Worldpay’s outstanding debt.”
Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready called it a “defining day,” and said the transaction gives the company “significantly expanded capabilities, extensive scale, greater market access and an enhanced financial profile.”
But Wall Street was less enthusiastic. While the acquisition gives Global Payments a larger footprint in payment processing, analysts at Mizuho described it as a strategic step backward.
Mizuho reiterated its neutral rating on the stock, warning that “the business could be seeing more meaningful margin pressure than investors acknowledge.” The analysts wrote that FIS won the trade, getting the “crown jewel” with Global Payments getting “more of the same.”
FIS shares rose more than 8% on Thursday.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The Tesla Cybertruck is in crisis. The automaker is still sitting on a ton of old inventory, which it is now heavily discounting, and it is throttling down production to try to avoid building up the inventory again.
When launching the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the vehicle program would reach 250,000 units a year in 2025:
“I think we’ll end up with roughly a quarter million Cybertrucks a year, but I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025.”
We are now in 2025, and Tesla is expected to currently be selling the Cybertruck at a rate of about 25,000 units a year – a tenth of what Musk predicted.
Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla began the second quarter with 2,400 Cybertrucks in inventory, valued at over $200 million.
This is a real problem for Tesla as many of those Cybertrucks are older 2024 model year units not eligible for the federal tax credit, and even some ‘Foundation Series’, which Tesla stopped building in October 2024 – meaning that Tesla is sitting on some 6-month-old trucks in some cases.
Tesla is now offering deeper discounts on the new inventory of Cybertrucks. The discounts can go as high as $10,000, but the average one is closer to $8,000, which is more than the tax credit:
Despite Tesla’s efforts, the automaker has only reduced its Cybertruck inventory by about 100 units since the beginning of the month.
Tesla is now further throttling down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, according to a new report from Business Insider.
According to two Tesla workers speaking with BI, the automaker has reduced its Cybertruck production teams and now operates at a fraction of its original capacity. It also moved some Cybertruck production workers to Model Y production at the plant.
One of the workers said:
“It feels a lot like they’re filtering people out. The parking lot keeps getting emptier.”
As we previously reported, Tesla has been operating all its factories at approximately 60% capacity to avoid building up excessive inventory amid lower demand.
When it comes to the Cybertruck program, it sounds like Tesla is lowering production even further.
Last week, Tesla launched a new version of the Cybertruck in an attempt to boost demand, but it has been poorly received due to the automaker’s removal of many essential features.
Electrek’s Take
There are a lot of other automakers that would have already given up on the Cybertruck ith these results, but not Tesla. Musk is not one to admit defeat easily.
However, Tesla is running out of options.
The new Cybertruck RWD was a desperate attempt, and I doubt it will work. Now, it sounds like Tesla is further throttling down production – virtually confirming that the new trim didn’t help.
The next step would be a complete production pause.
Again, I don’t think Musk wants to admit defeat, but at some point, it’s inevitable.
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