Associated infrastructure includes access and infield roads, airstrips, pipelines, a gravel mine and a temporary island to facilitate module delivery via sealift barges on permafrost and between waters managed by the state of Alaska.

Environmentalist organization Earthjustice immediately filed a lawsuit on behalf of conservation groups to stop the project, saying that the approval of a new carbon pollution source contradicted President Joe Biden's promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and transition the United States to clean energy; Judge Sharon Gleason upheld the Biden administration's approval in November 2023.

In 1999, ConocoPhillips acquired the first Willow-area leases in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska called the Bear Tooth Unit.

[9] In August 2019, after a 44-day public scoping period and having consulted with 13 tribal entities and Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act corporations, the BLM published a draft master development plan.

In August 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska challenged the BLM permit for the Willow project, because it "1) improperly excluded analysis of foreign greenhouse gas emissions, 2) improperly screened out alternatives from detailed analysis based on BLM's misunderstanding of leaseholders' rights (i.e., that leases purportedly afforded the right to extract 'all possible' oil and gas from each lease tract), and 3) failed to give due consideration to the requirement in the NPRPA to afford 'maximum protection' to significant surface values in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area".

[7] In August 2022, the Alaska Native corporation of the village of Nuiqsut submitted comments to the draft SEIS favoring a reduced number of drill pads from five to four, shorter gravel roads and protection of Teshekpuk Lake.

[16] Alaskan lawmakers from both sides, including the congressional delegation (Senators Lisa Murkowski (R), Dan Sullivan (R) and Representative Mary Peltola (D)),[17] as well as the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation have been supporting the Willow project.

[18] As of March 2023, the Department of the Interior permitted ConocoPhillips to build a new ice road from the existing Kuparuk road system at Kuparuk River Oil Field drill site and use a partially grounded ice bridge across the Colville River near Ocean Point "to transport sealift modules" to the Willow project drilling area.

Activists say that the approval of a new carbon pollution source contradicts President Joe Biden's promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and transition the United States to clean energy.

[23] In a second lawsuit, on the same day the Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and others asked the federal Alaska court to vacate the approval.

[27] On November 9, 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason upheld the Biden administration's approval of the Willow project and rejected claims by an Iñupiat group and environmentalists against it.

[29] Already in its October 2020 Willow Master Development Plan the BLM had stated: "The effects on subsistence and sociocultural systems may be highly adverse and disproportionately borne by the Nuiqsut population.

[4]: 11  The Willow project would damage the complex local tundra ecosystem and, according to an older government estimate, release the same amount of greenhouse gases annually as half a million homes.