|
PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Traversing the Northwest Passage Northern Transportation’s ship MV Alex Gordon travels from Halifax to the Canadian Beaufort Sea to assist with refit of Kulluk drill ship for Shell Alan Bailey Petroleum Directory
Fortunately marine technologies (not to mention health and safety standards) have improved out of all recognition since Sir John Franklin led an 1847 British expedition to seek the Northwest Passage. Franklin’s two ships were crushed and sunk by pack ice; Franklin and the more than 100 sailors in the expedition subsequently died of starvation in one of the Royal Navy’s more spectacular disasters. But the route that Franklin was attempting to navigate proved to be the optimum way to thread between the many islands of northern Canada, between Baffin Bay and the Canadian Beaufort Sea.
Sunny Munroe, business liaison and communications manager for Northern Transportation Co. Ltd., told Petroleum News about a July 2006 voyage through the Northwest Passage — the first of the 2006 season — by NTCL’s supply ship and anchor handler, the MV Alex Gordon, which traveled from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories in the company of the Vladimir Ignatyuk, an Arctic Class IV icebreaker owned by Murmansk Shipping and based in Murmansk, Russia.
Mobilizing the Kulluk The NTCL voyage resulted from a contract to assist with mobilizing the Kulluk Arctic drill ship for Shell — Shell has purchased the Kulluk for drilling in the leases that it now owns in the U.S. Beaufort Sea. The Kulluk has been moored for several years in McKinley Bay, about 50 miles east of Tuktoyaktuk, Munroe said. Frontier Drilling is managing the refurbishment of the Kulluk for Shell, which contracted NTCL to assist with the marine aspects of the refurbishment.
The drill ship is held in position by anchors and 10 steel mooring lines, each about 2,000 feet long. Shell wants all of these anchors and lines replaced as part of the refurbishment, Munroe said. Shell also wants to move the ship out of McKinley Bay during the summer and then put the ship back into the bay for the winter. The Alex Gordon is assisting with the mooring line replacement, recovering and replacing the 10-ton anchors as needed, and with moving the drill ship in and out of the bay. Shell has hired a team of mooring line specialists from Texas to change the lines.
Because NTCL’s fleet of tugs are engaged in the company’s routine freight and fuel transportation business during the summer, the company decided to use one of its pair of seasoned anchor handling and supply vessels for the Kulluk project. These vessels are also Arctic class II icebreakers and were designed and built for work in the Arctic by Dome Petroleum in the late 1970s.
“They’re both stationed in Halifax, so in order to arrive at McKinley Bay the Alex Gordon, which was chartered for this specific operation, had to go through the Northwest Passage,” Munroe explained.
But in order to arrive at McKinley Bay by Aug. 1, the date the marine part of the Kulluk project was scheduled to start, the Alex Gordon needed to sail from Halifax in July, a time of year in which ice conditions in the Northwest Passage are too severe for an Arctic Class II icebreaker. Shell had also chartered a Russian-owned Arctic Class IV icebreaker called the Vladimir Ignatyuk, which was formerly called the Kalvik and was owned by Gulf Canada during the heyday of Canadian Beaufort Sea exploration.
“In order for our ship to get through it needed to be accompanied by a higher-powered icebreaker. We followed the Vladimir Ignatyuk through the Northwest Passage,” Munroe said.
The Vladimir Ignatyuk would participate as the lead tug with the Alex Gordon in the Kulluk operations at McKinley Bay.
Experienced pilot and captain Even with modern icebreakers, navigating through Arctic ice is not a trivial exercise; a safe and successful voyage depends on experience and knowledge.
“You need the experience for two things: to know what your ship is capable of doing and to know what kind of ice you’re going through,” Munroe said. “… It’s helpful, at least for the first time that you go through (the passage), to have someone who has done it a number of times, who can say ‘this is OK, we can do this. Your ship can do this’.”
The master on board the Alex Gordon, Captain Selby Wiseman, spent 10 years in the Canadian Arctic during the 1980s working for Arctic Towing, which assisted the exploration vessels owned by Dome and Gulf. And Captain Yuri Krivenko, master of the Vladimir Ignatyuk, had sailed his ship through the Northwest Passage in 2005 as part of an assignment to move the SDC drilling rig from Herschel Island to a drill location in the Canadian Beaufort Sea for Devon Canada’s offshore program, the first Canadian Arctic offshore well in about 15 years. Shell also hired retired marine Captain Clive Cunningham to act as the ice pilot. Cunningham had worked for Dome Petroleum when that company was exploring offshore in the Canadian Arctic during the 1970s and 1980s.
“He’s an acknowledged expert in all aspects of northern marine travel and ice conditions,” Munroe said.
For most of the Gordon’s crew of 10, all mariners from Newfoundland, this was their first trip through the Northwest Passage. But for the Vladimir Ignatyuk’s crew of 25, this was second trip for many of them. All, however, are experienced crewmembers, well-trained for their work.
Cunningham and Munroe joined the Vladimir Ignatyuk and Alex Gordon, respectively, at Resolute, on the southern coast of Cornwallis Island — Cornwallis Island lies in the Canadian Arctic southwest of Ellesmere Island, at a latitude of about 75 degrees north. From Cornwallis Island the preferred Northwest Passage route heads south through Peel Sound (east of Prince of Wales Island), into Queen Maud Gulf. From there the route follows a series of straits or gulfs between the south side of Victoria Island and the northern coast of mainland Canada.
Inspection of a map of the region shows alternative routes in much wider water channels than Peel Sound, to the west of Prince of Wales Island, for example. However, the larger water bodies tend to contain larger amounts of multiyear ice — ice that has not melted between successive winters. Multiyear ice tends to be much harder and much more difficult to break through, thus making the Peel Sound route the most viable passage, Munroe explained.
Significant challenges But even Peel Sound can present significant challenges, with the sea ice shifting, cracking, opening up and closing again. As the Vladimir Ignatyuk and Alex Gordon progressed through the sound they encountered some ice more than four feet thick, Munroe said.
“The ice at the north end of Peel Sound was fairly thick and difficult and as we progressed south the ice conditions would change, depending on what the weather conditions were like, how much pressure there was on the ice, how close the ships were to land, if there was wind blowing,” Munroe said. “… The first day we only made about 10 miles and the second day we probably doubled that.”
The Vladimir Ignatyuk has a wide and flat spoon-shaped prow, designed to ride up on the ice and then break it using the weight of the ship. A “bubbler system” sprays water to lubricate the ice as the vessel slides onto it. Even so, breaking the ice would sometimes require more than one attempt.
“There were a number of instances where the Vladimir Ignatyuk took a run at it and had to back up and do it again,” Munroe said.
While the ships were in the sea ice Munroe said that she saw several polar bears, one of which came close to the ship. And she recalled one occasion when she thought there was a possibility of a whole herd of bears showing up at the Gordon. “There was one day when our cook on the Gordon was cooking a turkey and it smelled wonderful,” Munroe said. “(The boat) had stopped for a while and I was out on deck. I could smell the turkey through the oven vent on the outside and I thought we might get a few extra guests for dinner. But the ship started moving again and we didn’t get any.”
Other wildlife included many seals and Arctic terns, and a lone Arctic fox.
Less severe than normal Ice conditions improved as the vessels traveled south and, in fact, proved to be less severe than is normal for July.
“The farther south we got, the ice softened and then disappeared entirely,” Munroe said. “The ice pilot said he had never seen ice conditions that easy, that early in the shipping season.”
After leaving Resolute on July 21 the vessels arrived in Tuktoyaktuk on the evening of July 28.
“The schedule called for that trip from Resolute to Tuktoyaktuk to take from eight to about 10 days … so we were actually about three days early,” Munroe said.
However, three years ago, Cunningham piloted three ships through the Northwest Passage, and the ice in Peel Sound was so difficult the ships were stuck for four-and-a-half days, she said.
But those few days now seem trivial when compared with the years that early explorers spent marooned in the Arctic ice. Munroe recounted how she played a recording of a folk song about the 1847 Franklin expedition while the modern icebreakers passed the spot where Sir John Franklin met his demise.
“They had come down Peel Sound and they had got as far as a place called King William Island,” Munroe said. Near King William Island a body of water now called Franklin Strait meets Peel Sound, causing ice pressures that probably trapped and crushed Franklin’s two ships.
“Doing it now … the Vladimir Ignatyuk has 25,000 horsepower and a modern, specially designed steel hull,” Munroe said. “You can imagine that ship being stuck there for four-and-a-half days and these guys (in the 1840s) were stuck there for two years. … It just boggles the mind that they were doing it at all.”
| 