The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management published a draft environmental impact statement for Hilcorp Alaska LLC’s proposed Liberty oil and gas project in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope. The Aug. 17 publication of the draft EIS opened a 90-day public comment period, which will run through Nov. 19, it said.
Public hearings also will be held in Nuiqsut on Oct. 2, Fairbanks on Oct. 3, Kaktovik on Oct. 4, Utqiagvik-Barrow on Oct. 5, and Anchorage on Oct. 10, the US Department of the Interior agency said.
It said that in its draft proposed program, which Hilcorp submitted on Sept. 18, 2015, the company proposed building a small artificial gravel island in the shallow—19 ft—federal waters of the Beaufort Sea, about 20 miles east of Prudhoe Bay.
To be located about 5 miles off the coast in Foggy Island Bay, the 9-acre site would be similar in nature to the four oil and gas producing artificial islands currently operating in the area’s state waters—Spy Island, Northstar Island, Endicott Island, and Oooguruk Island—according to BOEM.
It said Hilcorp plans to install a “pipe-in-pipe” subsea pipeline to deliver oil to shore. The offshore portion of the pipeline will be laid in a trench, then buried. It will include automatic leak-detection and temperature-monitoring technology. Onshore, the pipeline would connect with the Badami pipeline which connects with the existing oil and gas infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay, BOEM said.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.
