By ELIZABETH BLUEMINK, Anchorage Daily News, December 15th, 2010
DISPUTE: Moving oil across the Colville River still to be resolved.
Federal regulators have issued a mixed ruling on Conoco Phillip's embattled plan to access a proposed drill site on its oil leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The drill site would be a satellite of the oil company's Alpine oil field near Nuiqsut. If developed, it would be the first commercial oil production from NPR-A.
Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struck a major blow to the project. The Corps said the project, which involved building a road and bridge across the Colville River, would violate the Clean Water Act because it wasn't the least environmentally damaging, feasible alternative. A pipeline buried under the Colville River was a less harmful way to move oil and other liquids between the NPR-A drill site to Alpine, the agency said.
The decision prompted an outcry from Alaska oil boosters, the Alaska congressional delegation and Gov. Sean Parnell, who argued in favor of the project, citing the prospect of new jobs and new oil for the trans-Alaska pipeline.
Conoco Phillips filed an administrative appeal of the permit denial. In a Dec. 2 decision, the agency's review officer rejected some of the company's arguments but agreed to remand several aspects of the appeal back to the agency's district office in Alaska.
Conoco Phillips Alaska spokeswoman Natalie Lowman told Petroleum News last week that the company is still reviewing the decision and evaluating its options.
One of the matters remanded back to the district office was its determination that the buried pipeline alternative was "logistically practicable." The office's district engineer didn't provide adequate support for that decision, the review officer said.
The Corps district spokeswoman Pat Richardson said on Tuesday that workers in Anchorage are going through the points raised in the appeal and reviewing their files.
Richardson added, "We will also likely need to engage in additional coordination with Conoco Phillips Alaska and the agencies. The (permit files take up) five boxes so we expect this process to take several months. We don't have a specified timeline to complete our review.
Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.
