BP Amoco has sent form letter responses to people writing to oppose the Northstar Project. Here's our analysis:
| I'd like to respond briefly to the concerns you expressed about BP Amoco's plans to develop the Northstar oil field in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. BP Amoco, as an energy-producing company, searches for new oil resources in many parts of the world, and the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's North Slope is a highly prospective area. | BP Amoco certainly does search for new oil reserves. The world's third largest private oil company, BP Amoco is one of the world's most aggressive oil companies in its exploration for new reserves. It is leading the expansion of the oil industry into the deep waters of the North Atlantic. It is expanding its operations in South America with particular efforts in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela where its activities threaten the fragile delta and the indigenous tribes who live there. In Columbia it continues to develop its activities. In Egypt, BP Amoco is looking to invest US$ 450 million in developing oil fields in the Gulf of Suez. It is invested heavily in the Caspian region. BP is one of several companies who are planning to develop in the fragile subarctic Sea of Okhotsk off the coast of Sakhalin Island. Finally, if BP Amoco carries out its proposed merger with ARCO, it will thoroughly dominate the Alaskan oil industry and be the leading force in Arctic oil development, both on tundra and at sea. | |
| Wherever we develop, we strive to adhere to the highest standards of environmental performance. This is reflected in our design of the Northstar project, which is located 6 miles offshore. The Northstar project will consist of a 5-acre gravel island (minor expansion and major reinforcement of an existing gravel island) and a pair of subsea pipelines buried at a depth of 7-to-10 feet beneath the seabed - significantly deeper than any ice gouging measured in the area. The project is expected to cost about $450 million, and BP Amoco has a 98% interest in the development. |
According to the people with the most experience with ice conditions in the proposed area of development, Inupiat subsistence whalers and hunters, "ice keel gouges in the ocean floor can be several times the 2.3 feet being relied upon by BP and possibly deeper than the 6-9 feet proposed for the Northstar trench." (Northstar comments from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, March 10, 1999.) In addition, the pipeline is at risk from ice-gouges that do not quite reach to the depth of the pipe. If an ice gouge were to pass over the pipeline, soil would be displaced both in front of the gouge and below the gouge, as the pipeline soil will be moved both laterally and vertically by as much as 2 feet. The force exerted by this movement is more than enough to damage the pipe. Along with the threats posed from ice gouging, strudel scour poses a very serious threat to the undersea buried pipe. Strudel scour is common in offshore areas near river deltas (like the Northstar Project area), and can excavate large areas of sea floor. These excavations would leave large areas of the pipe suspended and susceptible to additional strains that could lead to leakage or rupture. |
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| Through first-hand experience, research that has provided us with a massive database, and extensive consultation with North Slope residents, we have gained a deep understanding of conditions in the Beaufort Sea -- ice movement, waves, and river overfloods. And we've incorporated that knowledge into our engineering and designs. | BP Amoco has little or no first hand experience relevant to the Northstar project - no one has. No one has ever built an underwater pipeline in Arctic or even near-Arctic conditions. Three Russian pipelines (two under Western Siberia offshore and a third under the Sea of Okhotsk off northern Sakhalin Island) have been proposed for winter ice conditions, but only the Sakhalin pipeline is near the engineering stage. | |
| BP Amoco has conducted extensive environmental, oceanographic, ice and geo-hazard studies of the Beaufort Sea for more than 20 years. We have made a particular effort during the past three years of project design to work closely with the North Slope Borough, the Inupiat Eskimo communities of the North Slope, and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission to address concerns about the project, to enhance environmental performance and to mitigate potential impacts to the subsistence lifestyle of the Inupiat residents. | Many organizations representing local people have voiced their disapproval of Northstar including the Inupiat villages of Nuiqsut (the closest to the project site) and Wainwright, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (a regional group representing the traditional governments), and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. | |
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The North Slope Borough -- whose residents have the most direct stake in our environmental performance at Northstar -- approved the project in December. The State of Alaska approved it in February. State approvals cover the oil spill response plan that includes major commitments by BP Amoco on marine oil spill response systems that can operate in broken-ice conditions. We are awaiting federal permits, pending completion of the comment period on the Final Environmental Impact Statement. Countless safeguards are built into the design of Northstar. Measures to prevent a spill are supplemented by substantial response resources and capabilities. We do not accept assertions that spills are "inevitable." Nor do we concur with a mindset that because a Beaufort Sea development such as Northstar "hasn't" been done, it "can't" be done in an environmentally responsible manner. We've successfully overcome far more formidable technological challenges in more than two decades of doing business on Alaska's North Slope. |
BP Amoco has a bad track record on predicting oil spills. The company is the majority owner of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which runs the TransAlaska pipeline that delivers oil to Valdez, Alaska in Prince William Sound. In an Oil Spill Contingency Plan filed in 1987, BP-controlled Alyeska argued that a large oil spill of 200,000 barrels in Prince William Sound was "highly unlikely". Two years later, the Exxon Valdez poured 262,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound. In its Final Environmental Impact Statement on Northstar, the US Army Corps of Engineers notes that "the calculated total probability of one or more large spills (greater than 1,000 barrels) from any source is approximately 11% to 24% over the 15-year project life." In other words, the odds of a large oil spill from Northstar are up to 1 in 4. Moreover, the Beaufort Sea is frozen over for about eight months of the year. During the ice season, a pipeline leak could go undetected for months and only be revealed at break-up, causing a potentially massive spill from a relatively small leak. |
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| Our performance in Alaska has proven our commitment to environmentally responsible development. We always strive to further reduce our already minimal impact on the environment. It's no coincidence that in Alaska, where Alaskans have real first-hand knowledge of our performance and activities, there's significant support not only for new development in general, but for Northstar in particular. | In 1998, Doyon Drilling (a BP Amoco contractor) was fined a million dollars for illegal waste handling at the Endicott development near Prudhoe Bay. In fact, Northstar is highly controversial in Alaska, especially in the communities closest to the project. | |
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I might also add that BP Amoco is investing in alternative energy sources. We are currently one of the world's largest producers of solar photovoltaic panels and intend to grow this business ten-fold over the next decade. Additionally, BP Amoco has announced plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions globally by 10% by the year 2010, using a 1990 baseline. More than a dozen of our business units are currently involved in a pilot emissions trading program to seek the lowest cost way to reduce our emissions internally, and we plan to expand this trading program to all of our 126 business units over the next 18 months. You may have already heard that BP Amoco has launched an initiative to provide low-sulphur fuels in 40 cities around the world in an effort to help clean the air that people breathe. |
For every $10,000 BP Amoco spent on oil exploration and development in 1998, just $16 was spent on renewable energy. Even if BP Amoco did follow through on their announced plans to increase their renewable energy expenditures ten-fold over the next decade, this would still be less than 2 percent of its expenditures on oil. BP Amoco’s plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions are misleading. By far the largest pollution results from the burning of the oil BP Amoco sells, not from its production. Moreover, there is no way to prevent climate-damaging gases such as carbon dioxide from being released when oil or oil products such as gasoline are burned. There is no such thing as clean oil. BP Amoco could only be on the path towards sustainability when it transfers a significant portion of the capital it currently expends on oil development to renewable energy development. BP Amoco has made no such commitment. |
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Thank you for taking the time to write and express your concerns. I hope this information has been helpful. Tom Koch |
If you have already written one letter to BP Amoco and would like to write another letter using information from this response, you can use our web message form. |