Alaska Natives sue to block Phillips oil project
Copyright 2000 Reuters
December 19, 2000
By Yereth Rosen
Inupiat Eskimos from Alaska's North Slope have filed two lawsuits to try to block Phillips Petroleum's) plans to explore an offshore prospect in the Beaufort Sea.
Seven individuals filed their action Friday in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Monday the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, the tribal organization representing the eight villages of the North Slope Borough, filed their action in the same appeals court, said Jenna App, an attorney representing the individual plaintiffs.
The lawsuits, filed against the U.S. Minerals Management Service, challenge that agency's decision to grant Phillips permits to explore the McCovey prospect 12 miles north of Prudhoe Bay, said App, a staff attorney for Trustees for Alaska, an Anchorage-based environmental law firm.
Phillips has failed to meet the MMS regulations for oil-spill planning, App said. There are "very specific formulas" for responding to worst-case scenario spills that developers must abide by but which Phillips has missed, she said.
And the Inupiat, who hunt for whales in the area of the McCovey site, have reason to fear an oil spill in there, App added.
BP) has flunked a series of oil-spill drills and failed to meet state standards for disaster contingency at its offshore Northstar field, she noted. Conditions at Northstar, only six miles from shore, are not as challenging as those at McCovey, she said.
"If the oil industry can't demonstrate that they can clean up an oil spill six miles out, how in the world are they going to demonstrate it 12 miles out?" she said.
The Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope has also sued to block development at Northstar, a 175-million barrel field where BP Exploration Alaska Inc. expects to start production late next year.
The tribal organization filed its challenge to the McCovey project after the North Slope Borough reversed its earlier objection to Phillips' plans to build an ice road to the unit.
The Inupiat oppose all offshore drilling in the Arctic because of the oil-spill risks, said Bill Tegoseak, one of the original seven plaintiffs.
"We see no national security need to explore for fossil fuels in the Arctic Ocean at the expense of jeopardizing the health of all segments of Arctic life," he said in a release Monday.
Phillips Alaska Petroleum is pressing forward with its plans to do its exploration drilling this winter at McCovey, said Dawn Patience, a company spokeswoman.
The company plans to build an ice road to gain access to the site and an ice island to stage the drilling, she said.
Because the work is planned for the winter, when the sea is frozen solid, oil-spill risks are minimal, Patience said.
"There is no activity during broken ice or open water," she said.
If Phillips decides to pursue development at McCovey, it will have to apply for new permits and submit to an environmental impact statement, she said.