ConocoPhillips is driving toward first production from its Colville Delta 5 oil development on the eastern fringe of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. And now a potential legal snag for the project appears out of the way.
A federal judge on May 26 ruled against plaintiffs seeking to halt the CD-5 project. The judge, Sharon Gleason, granted summary judgment to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc.
The plaintiffs, a handful of North Slope villagers, had challenged the wetlands fill permit the Army Corps gave to ConocoPhillips for the project.
Although the case had been pending since 2013, ConocoPhillips was allowed to proceed with work on CD-5, and now the development is nearly done.
CD-5 is poised to become the first oil production drill site inside the petroleum reserve, which sprawls west from the existing oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope.
Development drilling begins
Natalie Lowman, spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips in Anchorage, provided this statement to Petroleum News:
“We are pleased with the court’s decision. Construction of CD-5 is almost complete, and we expect to see first oil (16,000 barrels of oil per day peak production) in the fourth quarter of 2015. CD-5 peak employment in the last two winters was about 700 construction jobs each year. Cost of the project is about $1.1 billion gross. Development drilling began in April and is ongoing.”
CD-5 will function as a satellite development feeding crude oil to the large, ConocoPhillips-operated Alpine oil field to the east.
The suit was brought by seven residents of Nuiqsut, a predominantly Inupiat Eskimo village about eight miles south of Alpine.
The plaintiffs asserted the Corps, in issuing a permit for the project, violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act.
In particular, they questioned why the Corps initially said a buried oil pipeline from CD-5 would be best, then flipped in favor of the design ConocoPhillips preferred - a topside pipeline suspended along a bridge crossing the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River.
In her 43-page ruling, Judge Gleason found that the Army Corps, in the end, met the law in permitting the CD-5 project. She ruled the Corps “has provided an adequate basis” for its determination of the least environmentally damaging practicable alternative.
Corps officials ultimately decided a pipeline running over the bridge would provide leak detection and spill response advantages over a pipeline installed underground with horizontal directional drilling.
Plaintiffs disappointed
In filing suit, the Nuiqsut villagers said the CD-5 project could hurt their subsistence hunting and fishing.
They argued the Army Corps had failed to further evaluate CD-5’s environmental impacts in light of changes to the project and new information about the environment and climate change.
The plaintiffs were represented by Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit law firm in Anchorage. Trustees put out a May 27 press release on the judge’s ruling.
“The challenged permit allows ConocoPhillips to build multiple bridges and a six-mile-long road between CD-5 and the Alpine facilities in the Colville River Delta,” the press release said. “The project runs directly through sensitive fishing and hunting areas for the residents of Nuiqsut. The Colville River Delta is the largest and most complex delta in the Arctic Coastal Plain. Two caribou herds (Central Arctic and Teshekpuk Lake) depend on the Delta, along with many species of fish and birds. The residents of Nuiqsut rely on the area to support their subsistence way of life.”
“This isn’t just about our land and the animals. It is about the health and safety of our people,” said Martha Itta, one of the plaintiffs. “The existing development and road to CD-5 are already blocking access to our traditional hunting and fishing areas. Conoco’s activities are making it harder and harder to put food on the table, and (this) decision makes it more challenging. We depend on these resources for our survival. We aren’t going to be able to continue our subsistence way of life if we live in the middle of an oil field.”
“It is disappointing that the court allowed the Corps to justify a decision after it has been made, without public involvement,” said Victoria Clark, executive director of Trustees for Alaska.
The press release did not mention an appeal.
