NEWS BULLETIN

September 28, 2010 --- Vol. 16, No. 86September 2010

Corps timeline for issuing Point Thomson permit stretches by six months

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers schedule for rendering its “record of decision” on a permit for ExxonMobil’s Point Thomson project has slipped considerably from the original timeline.

Petroleum News reported on Friday that the agency would need an extra month, until the end of January 2012, to make a decision.

In fact, the schedule for completing the EIS and issuing the record of decision appears to have slipped by up to six months.

After the Corps gave notice in December 2009 that it would prepare an EIS, it “estimated” the record of decision would be out by August 2011.

An apparently outdated schedule on the agency’s Point Thomson EIS website indicates July 2011 for signing the record of decision.

An ExxonMobil spokesman on Friday said he was not at liberty to comment on the repercussions of Corps delays.

The Corps will base its permit decision on an environmental impact statement now being prepared.

ExxonMobil had hoped for the decision by the end of 2011, to enable the company to get on with important site work in support of its gas cycling project at the remote field on Alaska’s eastern North Slope, a Corps official said.

The company, locked in a legal battle with the state over the fate of the Point Thomson unit and numerous leases, has pledged to begin production of natural gas condensate by year-end 2014.

See full story in the Oct. 3 issue of Petroleum News, available to subscribers online at noon, Friday, Oct. 1 at www.PetroleumNews.com


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