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ConocoPhillips jumps into CD-5 case Judge grants company intervenor status in lawsuit pitting Center for Biological Diversity against U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
A federal judge has granted ConocoPhillips’ motion to intervene in a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the company’s permit for a planned oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
“ConocoPhillips is hereby admitted into this litigation as an intervenor-defendant with full rights of participation,” U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason of Anchorage said in a July 24 order.
The case began as Center for Biological Diversity vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Arizona-based nonprofit filed the suit on June 5, asking the court to vacate the Clean Water Act Section 404 permit the Army Corps granted to ConocoPhillips in December 2011 to build and operate a drill site known as CD-5.
The project, in the vicinity of the Colville River Delta, is planned as a satellite development to nearby Alpine, a large oil field ConocoPhillips has operated since 2000.
The Center for Biological Diversity contends the Army Corps failed to do an updated, site-specific environmental analysis for CD-5, and violated several federal laws including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Battle for the frontier ConocoPhillips has said construction of CD-5 is scheduled to begin in the winter of 2014.
The lawsuit is one of two cases challenging the project.
The other case was filed against the Army Corps by a seven residents of Nuiqsut, a predominantly Inupiat Eskimo village about 8.5 miles southeast of the CD-5 site.
Gleason is presiding over both cases.
The suits would appear to represent resistance to the expansion of oil and gas activity into the western North Slope frontier.
CD-5 is a special project in that it would be the first permanent oil installation inside the vast petroleum reserve, which is west of Alpine and the other producing North Slope oil fields.
The project is one in a string of existing or planned Alpine satellites.
Once built, the CD-5 pad will connect to the Alpine field via a six-mile gravel road, including a bridge over the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River. An above-ground pipeline will carry a blend of oil, water and gas to the Alpine central processing facility.
The bridge will be the first across a major channel of the Colville.
Basis for intervention In its July 9 motion to intervene in the Center for Biological Diversity case, ConocoPhillips said it was “the target of this lawsuit in all practical terms.”
The company said it already has invested millions of dollars in CD-5. Were the permit to be vacated, it would “erase over a decade of effort by ConocoPhillips in obtaining the challenged ... permit, and impede development of CD-5 for a substantial and indeterminate period of time.”
The motion further said ConocoPhillips couldn’t rely on the Army Corps to look out for its interests in the case, noting the company and the agency had “quite often been at direct and significant odds regarding CD-5 permitting.”
ConocoPhillips struggled to get the permit. The Army Corps initially denied it, saying the satellite could be developed without a road, bridge and suspended pipeline across the river. Instead, the agency said the pipeline could be installed beneath the channel using horizontal directional drilling.
The Army Corps later reconsidered and permitted the project, dropping the underground pipeline idea.
The plaintiffs in both lawsuits fault the Army Corps for its reversal.
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