Lawsuit aims to block Conoco’s CD-5 project
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Alaska North Slope villagers contend Army Corps improperly granted permit, say oil development threatens hunting, fishing grounds
Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Seven Alaska North Slope villagers are suing in an effort to invalidate a hard-fought federal permit ConocoPhillips obtained for a satellite oil field development near the company’s prolific Alpine field.
The 30-page lawsuit, against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was filed Feb. 28 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.
Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit environmental law firm, is representing plaintiffs Jonah Nukapigak, Sam Kunaknana, Edward Nukapigak, Clarence Ahnupkana, Robert Nukapigak, Martha Itta and John Nicholls.
The suit says the plaintiffs are all residents of Nuiqsut, a predominantly Inupiat Eskimo village about eight miles south of the Alpine oil field. Families from Barrow resettled the previously abandoned village in 1973.
The plaintiffs are subsistence hunters and fishers, and worry the permitted oil development known as CD-5 (Alpine West) will harm their way of life in and around the Colville River Delta, the suit indicates.
The planned CD-5 development is 8.5 miles northwest of Nuiqsut, the suit says.
“This project will add a bridge, road, and traffic to one of our most important fishing and hunting areas,” plaintiff Kunaknana said in a press release on the Trustees for Alaska website. “We need to make sure that this project moves forward in a way that protects our land, subsistence resources, and culture.”
Lead plaintiff Jonah Nukapigak said: “Oil and gas drilling in the Colville River Delta has already had major impacts on our way of life and our ability to hunt and fish near our community. We are surrounded by drilling projects, and we are having to travel farther and farther to hunt for caribou because they are being driven away from our traditional hunting areas.”
Corps broke law, suit says The suit challenges the Army Corps’ Dec. 19, 2011, decision to issue a wetlands permit for the CD-5 project, which will involve construction of a drilling pad, access road and 1,405-foot bridge across the Nigliq Channel of the Colville River.
The Nigliq Channel provides vital subsistence fishing opportunity for species such as whitefish and cisco, the suit says.
The plaintiffs contend the permit decision violated the Clean Water Act and NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act.
The suit questions why the Corps, in 2010, denied a permit for CD-5 and then, in 2011, reversed itself.
The Corps’ initial permit denial rankled Alaska’s congressional delegation and state officials, and ConocoPhillips appealed the decision.
Based on input from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Corps had held that less environmentally damaging practicable alternatives existed. CD-5 could be developed without a road in the Colville Delta, and without a bridge and suspended oil pipeline across the Nigliq Channel. Instead, the pipeline could be installed under the channel using horizontal directional drilling.
One worry was the potential for “a catastrophic spill from the suspended pipeline over the river,” the lawsuit says.
In reconsidering and ultimately permitting a project design with the road, bridge and suspended pipeline, the Army Corps violated the Clean Water Act “by failing to provide a reasoned explanation for the decision to disregard the facts and circumstances underlying the Corps’ prior determination,” the suit says.
The suit also says inadequate NEPA analysis was done.
Construction set for 2014 The plaintiffs are asking the court to vacate the CD-5 permit and “issue an immediate and permanent injunction prohibiting any further construction activities resulting in the discharge of any dredged or fill material into any wetlands or waters of the United States associated with the development of CD-5 until a valid permit is issued.”
In issuing the permit, the Corps determined road access to CD-5 was the only way to provide year-round spill response access, and that leak detection could be tougher with a buried pipeline.
Curt Biberdorf, spokesman for the Army Corps, Alaska District, said in response to the lawsuit: “We went through a very rigorous review of the project and are confident in the record of decision.”
The ConocoPhillips board sanctioned CD-5 in October. Construction is scheduled to begin in the winter of 2014.
CD-5 will be the fourth satellite field in the vicinity of the Alpine field, in the Colville River unit. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is a minority partner in the unit.
CD-5 production will flow to the central processing facilities at Alpine. The satellite will be the first development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast expanse west of Alpine.
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