ConocoPhillips requests more time

LOUISVILLE – ConocoPhillips will ask the city of Louisville to push back the deadline for submitting the final site plan for its proposed research center until April 2012 as the company continues “an internal review” of the project.

ConocoPhillips Co. (NYSE: COP) announced in February 2008 that it had purchased a 432-acre property in Louisville to become the oil company’s “global technology and corporate learning center.” The property once belonged to Storage Technology Corp. before that company was acquired by Sun Microsystems Inc. and the facility was closed.

At the time, the company estimated staff could begin using the facility by 2011, but that timeline has been greatly revised.

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“Everything is in an internal review, and we have no projected timeline at this point,´ said Mary Manning, ConocoPhillips’ general manager for global real estate and facilities service.

Manning said ConocoPhillips is working with Louisville to change the date by which it is required to file a final site development plan.

The company unveiled concept drawings and filed a preliminary site plan with Louisville Planning Department in the fall of 2009. Louisville City Council approved the preliminary plan April 20, 2010.

Developers have one year after the approval of a preliminary site plan to get a final site plan approved, but they are able to ask for extensions, Louisville’s city manager Malcolm Fleming said.

The delay is being caused by the scale of the project, and ConocoPhillips’ desire to get it right from a design, business and legal standpoint, Manning said. If the final plan is approved, any further changes to the site would have to go back before Louisville’s planning commission and city council for reconsideration.

Delays “are not unusual on projects of this size,” Manning said. “It takes a lot of work to make sure you have it right.”

Louisville leaders want the project to move along as fast as possible. The ConocoPhillips site could accommodate 7,000 workers at build-out, although the company has not said how many people it plans to employ.

City officials also understand big projects take time.

“They keep reassuring us they’re working on it. They’ve been saying not to worry, and I take them at their word,” Fleming said.

“It’s clear they’re doing a lot of work internally,” Louisville mayor Chuck Sisk said. “I’m more convinced now than ever that this is going to happen and will make us all proud.”

Sisk said companies the size of ConocoPhillips, which ranked sixth on the 2010 Fortune 500 list, move on their own schedules.

Sisk also said the delays are not hurting local businesses, even though references to the ConocoPhillips project have become de rigueur when developers announce new projects in the area or experts make economic forecasts.

“It can be frustrating, but I would not take it in a negative way. I have not gotten any sense this has had a chilling effect on any businesses in Louisville,” Sisk said.

Manning said the delay should not be interpreted as a sign that ConocoPhillips’ commitment to the project is waning.

“We are very excited about it,” Manning said.

A statement on the ConocoPhillips website devoted to the Louisville project expands on that issue. The statement is phrased as an answer to the question “Do the economic challenges facing the energy industry threaten the new campus?”

“We continue to experience a tough global economy, but even so we continue to make prudent, forward-looking investments,” the statement said. “While this project falls into that category, it must compete with other strategic investments for capital. Accordingly, decisions regarding the design, construction and operation of this campus will be done in a business-like manner just as any other business decision we make.”

ConocoPhillips’ share price was $82.71 the week that Gov. Bill Ritter named the company as the buyer of the property in Louisville.. It peaked at nearly $95 in June 2008 before sinking to $35.36 the week of Feb. 2, 2009, a trend that mirrored other petroleum companies as oil prices skyrocketed in the spring and summer of 2008 and economy crashed in the fall of 2008. The price recovered, and it was trading around $68 on Wednesday.