All Chevron platforms back in operation
All eight Chevron oil platforms on the west side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet have resumed production following the reopening of the Drift River terminal, Chevron spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz told Petroleum News Aug. 31. In early April the terminal, and with it all of Chevron’s oil platforms, were shut in as a consequence of the threat to the terminal posed by the eruption of the neighboring Redoubt Volcano.
The terminal restarted operations in early August after the volcanic eruption subsided. However, in the interests of eliminating the future risk of an oil spill from the terminal tanks, were the volcano to burst back into action, most of the ballast water and remaining oil in the tanks was removed, and the tanks were bypassed, so that oil is now delivered from the Cook Inlet pipeline, the oil export line on the west side of the Inlet, directly to tankers moored at the terminal’s Christy Lee offshore platform.
Storage tanks at Chevron’s oil production facilities at Granite Point and Trading Bay now serve the purpose of the disconnected Drift River tanks, with a tanker having to off-load oil at Drift River every two weeks.
Apparently the new arrangement can result in some interruption to oil production.
“We are currently loading a ship and, while we are loading, a couple of platforms are not shipping oil,” Sinz said. Sinz also commented that after seven days of operation, following the Drift River restart, the Granite Point platform had to cease operations again because of a gas-lift engine failure, but that the platform should come back on line within a few days.
At present, Chevron is not releasing any production data for its Cook Inlet platforms, Sinz said.
—Alan Bailey
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