Inlet platforms may be idle for months

Redoubt volcano remains potentially explosive; Drift River won’t be restarted soon; Chevron looks for other ways to move oil

Richard Mauer

Anchorage Daily News

With Redoubt volcano still active and potentially explosive, officials have given up trying to restart the nearby Drift River oil terminal anytime soon, indefinitely idling about 10 oil platforms in Cook Inlet.

“It will take as long as Mother Nature decides,” said a Coast Guard spokeswoman, Petty Officer Sara Francis. It’s unlikely Drift River can reopen before early fall, she said.

The owner of the Chevron-operated facility, Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., is studying other ways of getting oil from the west side of Cook Inlet to market, Francis said. But so far, officials have not come up with a bypass plan, she said.

None of the production or pipeline employees have been furloughed yet, but contractors have been idled, according to Francis and Chevron spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz. Drift River employees have been working on other projects, Francis said. Chevron, which operates the platforms, is evaluating its workforce needs, Sinz said.

The state is losing about $45,000 a day in missed royalty payments.

The Drift River facility, a storage and transit way station between the offshore wells and refineries, was evacuated the day after Redoubt began its current eruption cycle March 22.

Thirty years ago, when Cook Inlet was in its prime and producing far more oil than could be consumed in Alaska, the facility sent oil as far away as Taiwan to be refined. Now all its crude travels to the Tesoro refinery in Nikiski, just a few miles by boat.

An effort to restart operations and deliver oil to a tanker on April 4 was scrubbed by another major blast from Redoubt.

Both explosions sent massive floods of mud and water down Drift River. A dike built in 1990 spared tanks containing 6.2 million gallons of crude, but the facility’s airstrip was inundated, as were some buildings and mechanical facilities.

The sobering effect of the April 4 explosion, with workers forced to take shelter in an emergency safe house above projected high water levels and the tanker fleeing an ash fall, led officials to give up trying to operate the terminal during eruption lulls.

On April 7, the tanker returned to the terminal’s offshore dock and took on as much oil from the facility as workers could pump — 3.7 million gallons. The remaining 2.5 million gallons was below the pump inlets and contained a mix of crude, sludge, sand and other gunk that Tesoro couldn’t process. Before the tanker left, it pumped millions of gallons of seawater back into the tanks to increase their weight and reduce the possibility of them floating off their foundations if the terminal were flooded.

A joint command of the Coast Guard, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Cook Inlet Pipeline has been meeting weekly to monitor the situation and decide how to proceed.

While some workers have made day forays to the site, there’s been little activity at the terminal since the tanker’s departure, Francis said. When it’s safe, they will return to clear the quicksand-like mud off the runway, a job estimated to take 20 days.

It may be possible to suck out some of the water and sludge remaining in the two active tanks later this month. A propeller at the bottom of each tank — kind of like the blade in a food processor — can mix the material and suspend it in the water to some degree, she said.

But before normal operations can resume, the tanks must be completely cleaned. Under non-volcanic conditions, that means bringing a vacuum truck to the facility to suck out the sludge, then sending workers into the tank to scrub it clean. Start to finish is normally a four-month, 24-hour-a-day operation, she said.

“It’s going to take all summer to clean those tanks,” Francis said.

And that’s if Redoubt cooperates. Scientists with the Alaska Volcano Observatory said Redoubt appears to be building a massive, unstable dome from lava emerging through the vent. Two likely scenarios, according to the AVO’s Chris Waythomas:

• The dome blows up from a buildup of gas rising through the vent;

• A portion of the dome collapses down the flank of the volcano from the pull of gravity, weakening the structure and allowing internal pressure to blast through.

Either event could trigger another massive flood down Drift River, Waythomas said.

Francis said Cook Inlet Pipeline Co. officials are considering adding another 5 feet of height to the 1990 dike system, which already rises about 25 feet.