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Alaska court again slows Pt. Thomson case
The Alaska Supreme Court has granted another delay in the case pitting the state against ExxonMobil and other companies for control of the Point Thomson oil and gas field on the eastern North Slope.
Lawyers for the two sides say they’re trying to settle the dispute, which involves an effort by the state Department of Natural Resources to dissolve the Point Thomson unit.
DNR, which appealed to the Supreme Court after an unfavorable lower court ruling back in January, was facing a Nov. 1 deadline to file its opening brief.
Deadline now February But the high court, in an Oct. 28 order “entered at the direction of an individual justice,” extended the deadline by three months to Feb. 1, 2011, after DNR and ExxonMobil jointly requested the delay.
Opposing lawyers said they wanted to save effort and expense by focusing for now on trying to settle the complex, high-stakes case.
This is the second time the Supreme Court has delayed the Point Thomson proceedings to accommodate settlement talks.
Point Thomson is believed to hold hundreds of millions of barrels of petroleum liquids plus an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The gas is considered crucial to support a proposed gas pipeline.
State officials began an effort to reclaim the state acreage at Point Thomson out of frustration that ExxonMobil and other leaseholders had failed to develop the field decades after its discovery.
—Wesley Loy
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