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February 2008

Vol. 13, No. 7 Week of February 17, 2008

Whale hunter says ‘show me’

North Slope Borough mayor wants to see practical, demonstrable solutions to potential oil spills in Alaska’s offshore Arctic

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

A record-breaking lease sale for the Chukchi Sea outer continental shelf on Feb. 6 has once again turned the spotlight on potential oil and gas development in the Arctic offshore. But one key concern arising from the prospect of oil rigs operating offshore Alaska’s North Slope is the possibility of an oil spill in the waters of the Beaufort or Chukchi seas.

Petroleum News has run a series of articles reviewing Arctic offshore oil spill contingency plans and spill prevention measures, as conceived by industry and the U.S. Minerals Management Service. And on Feb. 8 Petroleum News asked Mayor Edward Itta of the North Slope Borough for his views on the status of offshore oil spill response capabilities.

“The challenge with dealing with an offshore oil spill in Arctic waters is so much greater than onshore and that’s always why we’ve always had such a strong preference for onshore development,” Itta said. “… We believe even in the best of circumstances that offshore spill response currently is more theory than practice.”

San Francisco spill

Itta cited the response to the November 2007 spill of 58,000 gallons of bunker oil from a damaged container ship in San Francisco Bay as evidence for the inadequacy of current offshore oil cleanup methods.

“This is a place where they had 1,500 people, 50 vessels and 18,000 feet of boom to work … and the weather … is a lot tamer than it is up here in the Arctic,” Itta said. “They had the resources available, the best in the world, right there, and yet the majority of that oil was not recovered.”

When compared to San Francisco Bay, the Arctic presents many challenges, including extreme temperatures, very remote locations and the lack of a supporting infrastructure, Itta said.

And along the Arctic coast of Alaska, communities depend on the sea for their way of life.

“Reasonable people would have to agree that we have a huge stake in this whole question of what’s safe and what’s acceptable,” Itta said.

If there were to be a catastrophic offshore spill the coastal communities would have to live with the consequences every day, he said.

“That’s why we need more than promises and evolving technologies before we can have confidence as a people in the safety of offshore oil spill response,” he said. “… We just continue to ask to be informed (about) what can be done.”

Broken ice

For example, industry has not demonstrated that it can clean up oil in broken ice conditions, the mayor said.

“It’s just common sense that when you get dynamic ice movement, moving around, that it interferes with the booms that are supposed to contain the oil and also interferes with the smaller vessels in the fleet that are helping to handle all this stuff,” Itta said. “Then when you get the oil mixing in with the ice nobody’s shown us how they’re going to figure out how to separate it from the ice. … It’s not hard for me to visualize this in my mind because I’ve lived up here and I’m a whaler and a hunter, as so many of my people are.”

Itta said that the North Slope Borough had looked into the in-situ burning of spilled oil and concluded that the technique does not work when the ice coverage is more than 30 percent. And, even in open water, the oil will not burn if the slick is too thin or the wave action too strong, Itta said.

“We know it’s not like throwing a match into a puddle of gasoline,” Itta said.

Itta also expressed skepticism about the potential to recover oil that has become trapped under sea ice, perhaps as a result of a rupture in a subsea pipeline. In particular he questioned the practicality of leaving oil under the ice during the winter and then recovering the oil in the spring when the ice melts.

“We know up here from a lifetime and generations of experience that ice moves,” Itta said. “You’ll never get that oil back again when the ice moves. Then, furthermore, we naturally … wonder what happens to the animals that use the ice while it’s floating around covered in oil.”

And, although sea ice can probably help to contain spilled oil, the ice also adds to the difficulty and danger of operating spill response vessels, he said.

Issues such as these need to be addressed openly, Itta thinks.

“We’d like to have it dealt with in a straightforward and forthright manner, so we can understand it and have some level of confidence and comfort that ‘we’ve got you covered’,” Itta said. “So far we haven’t seen that.”

New developments

The borough has been following developments in new oil spill response technologies. Itta is looking forward to visiting Norway to learn about research taking place there and to talk to people impacted by the oil and gas industry. Norway is at a similar latitude to Alaska and has oil and gas operations taking place in ice conditions, Itta said.

“I’m very much interested in finding out about what they have over there,” Itta said. “… That’s been the intent. To go somewhere where operations have been in existence for some time and get a first hand look and understanding.”

Itta said that he and some other North Slope leaders are planning a trip to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the latest spill response technology available there and to ask questions about how the use of the equipment might be adapted for Arctic conditions.

But no one can ever be certain of success in an offshore Arctic oil spill response, Itta said.

“The first thing we need to acknowledge is that oil spill response as it is currently is a very inexact science, and it always will be,” he said. “Some of the technology may be promising — I like what I hear sometimes — but it’s always going to be dependent on nature’s cooperation and nobody in their right mind counts on nature’s cooperation up here in the Arctic.”

And that underlines the importance of oil spill prevention.

“I think the weaknesses that are inherent in oil spill response point to the importance of spill prevention,” Itta said. “I commend industry for using that mantra as a guiding light. … I believe that anything we can do to prevent a spill before it happens is just money well spent.”

But addressing the possibility of an offshore oil spill requires dialogue, Itta said.

“I’ve always felt that communications are the key to understanding what the issues are,” he said. “My hope is that there is a sense of understanding and that reasonable mitigating measures are put in place that can be monitored. And that’s all we’ve ever really asked for up here. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all. I continue to talk with industry.”





Shell says no Beaufort oil drilling in 2008

Even if the U.S. Court of Appeals gives Shell approval to drill oil exploration wells in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea this year, the company has decided not to do any "critical" drilling in 2008, Shell’s Alaska operations manager Susan Moore said Feb. 14.

The company’s spokesman in Alaska, Curtis Smith, told Petroleum News that Shell’s decision was based on “the availability of drilling assets” combined with a response to “repeated requests that we take a measured approach to exploring the Alaska offshore.”

However, the company does plan to drill some shallow wells, termed “top-hole wells,” that would not go deep enough to penetrate hydrocarbon reservoirs. Shell has been discussing its plans with regulators, Moore said.

“Basically it’s preparatory work that would take place at the Sivulliq prospect,” Smith said, referring to the prospect that used to be called Hammerhead and which lies offshore the North Slope, due north of Flaxman Island on the western side of Camden Bay.

“Top-hole wells typically extend (to depths of) 1,000 to 1,200 feet and provide structural support for the well as it grows in depth,” Smith said.

Essentially, a top-hole well is a mudline well cellar with a 30-inch and 20-inch casing string that establishes the well structure, isolates the permafrost and provides the well with structural integrity, Smith said.

Shell wants to use its Kulluk floating drilling platform to drill three of these wells at Sivulliq. But the Frontier Discoverer, the drillship that Shell had also contracted for Beaufort Sea drilling, will remain in Australia during 2008, he said.

Drilling top-hole wells “will give us a head start on our 2009 season, which we hope will be quite robust,” Smith said.

To drill the top-hole wells Shell will need permission of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit because the company’s Beaufort operations remain on hold, pending the outcome of an appeal by the North Slope Borough, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and several environmental organizations against U.S. Minerals Management Service approval of Shell’s exploration plan. That appeal has resulted in a court injunction on Shell’s Beaufort drilling activities until the case is settled. The court heard oral arguments in the case in December but it is not clear when it will make a ruling.

“If we get the go-ahead from court and the permits we need, taking a more measured approach will help instill confidence with the stakeholders — demonstrate that we can operate safely and responsibly,” Smith said. “We’ll also get a chance to show off some of our technology.”

—Alan Bailey & Kay Cashman


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