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Breaking News from America's Progressive Community... 1999
Releases
The press releases posted here have been provided to NewsCenter by the one of the many progressive organizations we have selected to participate. If you would like more information about this press release, you should contact the organization directly. |
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| FEBRUARY
16, 1999 7:01 PM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Greenpeace USA Deborah Rephan, Media Team, 202-319-2492 |
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| Greenpeace Vows to Continue Fight Against BP's Northstar, After Alaska Court Fails to Stop Illegal Ice Road Project | ||||
| FAIRBANKS,
AK - February 16 - A Superior Court Judge in Fairbanks today declined to order a halt to the
illegal construction of ice roads for British Petroleum's Northstar project, the
first offshore oil project in the Arctic Ocean. Greenpeace filed suit against
the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for giving BP an improper
"go-ahead" for ice road construction.
BP started ice road construction as the first step in its two-year construction timetable, before it had the necessary permits. Ice roads are used to haul 700,000 cubic yards of gravel six miles over the frozen Beaufort Sea from an onshore mine site near the Kuparuk River. The gravel will be placed in the Beaufort Sea to shore up Seal Island, a manmade island constructed in the early 1980s for drilling exploratory wells. "Despite today's ruling on the ice roads, the Northstar project is fatally flawed," said Melanie Duchin, of Greenpeace in Anchorage. "Greenpeace will fight the Northstar project every step of the way in order to protect the Arctic Ocean, the animals and people who depend on it, and the world's climate," she said. BP's Northstar project would be the first project of its kind to use a subsea pipeline for transporting oil from an offshore artificial island to the Trans Alaska Pipeline. The project has been in the works for over four years, and has been subject to numerous delays due to the unproven and dangerous nature of subsea technology in the Arctic. An eight -volume Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) was released on February 5, and reveals substantial flaws, particularly with respect to the inability to clean up oil spills and the cumulative impacts of Northstar to the Arctic marine ecosystem. The FEIS reveals that there is a one in four chance of a large oil spill at some point in the 15-year lifetime of the project. Cleaning up an oil spill in Arctic conditions is next to impossible, especially in broken ice conditions during spring and fall. "It's time for BP to acknowledge that Northstar is bad for the environment, bad for the climate, and bad for business," said Duchin. "If BP truly cared about Alaska, it would cancel the ill-planned Northstar project and redirect its resources to plan a transition away from an oil-based economy. This would protect the environment, and protect the economy and jobs for the State and for Alaskans from the threat of layoffs and budget deficits when oil prices take a nose dive." Greenpeace is campaigning to halt oil exploration in new oil frontiers such as the Alaskan Arctic and the Northeast Atlantic oceans as the first step toward phasing out fossil fuels and phasing in renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind. "Given that we can't afford to burn even one-quarter of known fossil fuel reserves if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, it is completely irresponsible for BP to push for opening a new oil frontier in the Arctic Ocean," Duchin concluded. Greenpeace is the leading independent organization that uses peaceful and creative activism to protect the global environment. ### |
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