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Group sues Liberty
9th Circuit appeal claims approval of Beaufort Sea project was illegal
Alan Bailey Petroleum News
On Dec. 17 a group of environmental organizations filed an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, claiming that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of Hilcorp Alaska’s Liberty oil field development in the Beaufort Sea was illegal. The organizations allege that the project approval infringed the National Environmental Policy Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. The organizations also allege that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, when making its determination for the project, infringed the Endangered Species Act.
The organizations, which consist of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Greenpeace USA and Pacific Environment, have yet to file a court briefing, documenting in detail their arguments supporting their claim. Nor has BOEM or Hilcorp yet made any response.
Nature of the challenge However, in a press release announcing the appeal several environmental organizations gave some indication of the nature of the claims.
“We can’t let this reckless administration open the Arctic to offshore oil drilling. It threatens Arctic wildlife and communities and will only make climate chaos worse around the world,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Liberty is the bad step down a very dangerous path. An oil spill in the Arctic would be impossible to clean up in a region already stressed by climate change.”
“When it rubber-stamped this project, the administration illegally failed to take a hard look at the consequences it will bring for imperiled polar bears. It misled the public about this project’s contribution to climate change. According to the agency’s fuzzy math, drilling for oil will actually reduce climate change,” said Rebecca Noblin, staff attorney with Earthjustice. “Nor did it account for climate-change impacts already happening in the Arctic like permafrost melt, sea-ice melt and increasing storms that make this an exceedingly dangerous prospect and increase the potential for oil spills.”
Gravel island development Hilcorp plans to develop the Liberty oil field from a small artificial gravel island in 19 feet of water in the Beaufort Sea, about five miles offshore, some 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay. A buried subsea pipeline would carry sales grade crude oil to shore, to connect with the existing Badami pipeline. Under the environmental protection requirements specified in the environmental impact statement for the project, Hilcorp will only be allowed to drill into the oil reservoir in winter conditions. The subsea pipeline concept involves a pipe-in-pipe design, with an outer pipe providing protection from an oil leakage into the sea should the inner oil pipeline rupture.
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