Cost overruns and technical setbacks have led British Petroleum (BP) to suspend its $1.5bn Liberty offshore project in Alaska.
Liberty offshore oilfield is located four miles off the northern coast of Alaska in Foggy Island Bay, in the Beaufort Sea.
Dawn Patience, BP Exploration (Alaska) spokesperson, was quoted by Reuters as saying that an 18-month company review concluded that the Liberty project, a field with about 100 million barrels of recoverable oil, should not go forward as planned.
"We are not going to pursue Liberty in its present form. The project, as it’s designed right now, doesn’t meet BP’s standards," said Patience.
US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management spokesman John Callahan revealed that the company has informed federal regulators that it is seeking to redesign the development.
A review by BP found that the Liberty project, slated to produce 40,000 barrels a day, would have cost more than $1.5bn and would have taken several years to begin production.
The project has undergone a series of technical problems and this announcement is the latest in a series of delays following BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, reports Reuters.
