On April 3, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage rejected a bid by environmentalists to temporarily suspend the U.S. government’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ oil drilling project in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Specifically, the judge rejected requests to immediately halt construction work on the Willow project.
The judge’s decision meant ConocoPhillips Alaska could move ahead with winter work, which the company did within hours of being notified of the decision.
(See map in the online issue PDF)
As reported in last week’s issue of Petroleum News, ConocoPhillips was already building ice roads to support winter construction activities, but in order to accommodate the judicial process the company had agreed not to begin work at the gravel mine site until April 4, unless the court issued a decision denying the plaintiffs’ motions before that date.
“With this decision from the federal district court, we are able to immediately begin construction activities,” ConocoPhillips spokesperson Rebecca Boys told PN April 3.
Winter season construction activities are comprised of five components: (1) ice road and pad construction, (2) opening a gravel mine site, (3) constructing a gravel road that will provide access to the Willow project area, (4) building a subsistence boat ramp on the Tiŋmiaqsiuġvik River and (5) gravel work in the Kuparuk River unit.
The company has said it will lay gravel west from the Greater Mooses Tooth 2 satellite drill site into the Bear Tooth unit where Willow is located.
Dependent on weather
The judge’s decision said winter work at Willow is likely to continue until approximately April 25, depending on the weather.
As approved by Interior’s mid-March Record of Decision, the Willow project will consist of three drill sites as opposed to the five sites requested by the company, and related support infrastructure, including a processing facility, airstrip, operations center, gravel mine, gravel roads connecting project infrastructure, and pipelines.
Per the judge’s decision, this winter ConocoPhillips expects to build up to 3.1 miles of a gravel road, with the total surface disturbance from this winter’s activities ranging from 10.4 acres to 38.5 acres, depending on how long the winter season lasts.
Mixed bag from Nuiqsut
The new gravel mine site that ConocoPhillips plans to open this winter is in the Tiŋmiaqsiuġvik area, approximately 4 to 5 miles southeast of GMT-1 and 7 miles west of the community of Nuiqsut, which is home to approximately 500 people who are predominately Iñupiat.
The parties in the lawsuits, the judge said, submitted conflicting declarations from Nuiqsut residents with respect to the potential impact of winter construction activities on subsistence caribou hunters.
“Mr. Kunaknana states that he hunts for caribou in the winter and is concerned about whether he will be able to continue doing that if there is road construction and blasting for the gravel mine now and in the future. By contrast, Thomas Napageak Jr. maintains that the gravel roads are a blessing for access to subsistence resources because they provide year-round access to caribou hunting grounds, whereas traveling off road on the tundra can be dangerous as equipment can break down or hunters can get stuck and stranded, the court decision on the injunction said.
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, the judge’s decision said, acknowledges that the gravel mine site will affect caribou by (1) causing habitat loss and alteration and (2) disturbance or displacement from the noise and human activity. And yet, with respect to habitat loss and alteration, the Winter 2023 Construction Activities will cause surface disruption on only a very small fraction of the NPR-A - 0.00015%. Moreover, BLM suggests that habitat loss and alteration from gravel mining specifically will have a minimal effect on caribou because the habitats lost are not unique and occur throughout the analysis area, so caribou would likely move to similar habitats nearby.
Online Sept. 1, 2029
Production from Willow is estimated to peak at 180,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day - approximately 600 million barrels over the life of the project, ConocoPhillips Alaska President Erec Isaacson has said.
Production is estimated by the company to begin Sept. 1, 2029.
The $7-8 billion Willow project will generate 2,000 jobs in the construction phase, with 9 million construction manhours going into the project over the period, Isaacson said. It will create 300 permanent jobs.
According to BLM, Willow could generate between $8 billion and $17 billion in new revenue for the federal government, the state of Alaska, the North Slope Borough and communities in and around the petroleumm reserve.
