This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Boucher with Charlotte Howard, the executive editor of the

Economist magazine, reflecting on her posting of this very detailed analysis of Velasca

then and Alaska now. I learned that in the inflation reduction act just passed by Congress,

there is attention to the future of America on clean energy. However, I did not occur

to me that there's no nothing in the law to curb the use of oil. And Connico Phillips

is interested in developing oil out of Alaska again, despite we're just touching on anecdotes

about the changing environment. What is Willow, Charlotte? What is that represent

to Connico Phillips? What is happening there? So Prudobe has been the center of Alaskan

oil since it was discovered in the late 1960s. But Connico is one of the companies that's

looking west from Prudobe. So if you think about Prudobe, you have Prudobe in the middle of

the north slope, the Arctic refuge to the east, and to the west, you have this huge area

of land called the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, which was designated as such by President

Harding in 1923 when he didn't actually know if there was much oil there. And now at last,

companies are really interested in drilling in NPRA and Connico is the biggest company that's

interested in doing so because it found this really big, not at all as big as Prudobe,

but a sizable oil field to the west. And so what it wants to do is keep creeping west from

Prudobe using that infrastructure that already exists, using that pipeline that stretches down

to the port of Aldez, but continuing to develop new projects to the west. And part of what is

interesting is that the oil industry is not static. I mean, it has so many talented engineers

who are working day and day out to find new ways to drill more efficiently. And the result is

that what even a decade ago might have seemed like an area that would not be economically competitive

with the likes of shale in west Texas. Now they found ways to boost efficiency so that it can be

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