Oil pipeline project faces delay anew

The construction manager for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s new oil pipeline has left the project and this development is expected to cause another delay.

CUC legal counsel Deborah E. Fisher notified the U.S. District Court for the NMI on Thursday that without the construction manager, they believe this will delay the construction date, which they had been expecting to be Jan. 3, 2012.

“CUC is currently looking at alternatives, and would like to discuss this issue further and give further details during the site visit,” said Fisher in the letter to designated district court judge David O. Carter and Attorney General Edward T. Buckingham.

Fisher disclosed that CUC is in contact with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has also conferred with the U.S. Department of Justice.

“CUC is doing our best along with the contractor (with whom we have the construction management contract and for which the construction manager was a sub-contractor) to engage another construction manager as soon as possible,” the CUC counsel said.

The CUC pipeline is an eight-inch aboveground receiving pipeline that delivers fuel to CUC power plants 1 and 2 in Lower Base from the Mobil oil facility.

EPA had stated that until the pipeline is properly repaired or replaced, it poses a threat to United States waters.

In October, EPA counsel Bradley O’Brien expressed misgiving that the new deadline of March 15, 2012, to finish the project is in danger again despite the over $2 million the U.S. Department of the Interior had provided CUC to build the new oil pipeline.

O’Brien had stated that CUC is now apparently proposing that it complete the pipeline project in May 2012-at the cusp of the typhoon season.

O’Brien said EPA continues to have concerns regarding CUC’s management of this pipeline project and movement toward construction completion.

EPA and CUC first agreed to complete the project by Feb. 24, 2011. They agreed to have a new deadline by June 1, 2011. CUC completed the design, but failed to construct the pipeline by this extended deadline.

The latest deadline is March 15, 2012.

In response to O’Brien’s concern, CUC asked the court to give it a three-week extension in total for the completion of the three-phased deadlines.