On Oct. 21, environmental campaign group Greenpeace and a number of Inupiat activists from Alaska's North Slope area filed a lawsuit in the US in a bid to prevent BP Amoco PLC's planned Northstar field development.
BP Amoco plans to build an artificial island 6 miles off the Alaskan coast, where drilling and production facilities would be built and linked to shore by a subsea pipeline.
The protesters filed the suit against the US Minerals Management Service in a US Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
Greenpeace and the Inupiat activists claim that the Northstar project lacks an adequate oil-spill plan and jeopardizes the fragile marine and coastal environment of the Arctic. A Greenpeace official said, "BP Amoco should not be trying to open up an entirely new oil frontier and drill for new oil reserves, given the impact that would have on the environment and on climate change. BP Amoco needs to use the resources that it is putting into Northstar and put them into renewable resources."
Greenpeace was joined in the lawsuit by five Inupiat activists, whose communities were said to depend on the marine and coastal resources of the Arctic Ocean.
The suit is intended to overturn a Sept. 3 MMS decision by giving the green light to Northstar. The field has estimated reserves of 145 million bbl of oil and is expected to be brought on stream in late 2001.
A BP Amoco official told OGJ that construction of process modules for Northstar was well under way and that construction of an ice road from the mainland to the artificial island would begin soon, as winter is closing in.
The company anticipates first production from Northstar as scheduled in 2001 and says peak production will be about 65,000 b/d of oil, making it the sixth largest of 11 producing fields on the North Slope.
However, Charles Edwardsen, local activist and one of five Inupiat to join the suit opposing Northstar, said, "We are concerned, naturally, about the deterioration of our environment and that this is a new frontier territory. The project is all going to be trial-and-error engineering. We feel that the environmental impact statement for Northstar is not complete, and we wish to declare the Beaufort Sea as a critical habitat for the bowhead whale."
A BP Amoco official in Anchorage told reporters that the Northstar project was supported by most people in the North Slope area, which stands to benefit economically from the development.
"This project required permits from the local governments that represent the Inupiat people of the North Slope," said the official. "We would not and could not move forward without the consent of the people of the North Slope, as expressed by their local elected representatives."
