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Coast Guard icebreaker returns to service
According to an April 8 press release from Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker Polar Star is now ready for operational deployment following a major refit. The aging icebreaker had been out of action, in a “caretaker” status, since 2006.
With the Polar Star out of commission, the only working U.S. icebreaker had been the Healy, a vessel intended as a platform for scientific research and having only medium ice breaking capability. The 399-foot, 75,000-horsepower Polar Star is a heavy-duty icebreaker.
There has long been concern about the lack of U.S. icebreaking capacity, especially as Arctic offshore activity grows in response to the shrinking sea-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. And that concern has led to a continuing debate about the relative merits of refurbishing old icebreakers versus building new ones — the construction of heavy duty icebreakers is extremely expensive.
Polar Sea on hold In June 2012, following a meeting between Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp and Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Begich and Cantwell, the Coast Guard decided to put on hold the planned scrapping of the heavy icebreaker Polar Sea, the sister ship to the Polar Star, pending an evaluation by Congress and the administration on how best to meet the nation’s icebreaking needs. The Polar Sea has been laid up in Seattle following engine problems with the vessel in 2010.
The Coast Guard’s current five-year plan includes $860 million for a new icebreaker, with $8 million of that sum being in President Obama’s 2013 budget for planning and design work.
“As chairman of the Senate Oceans Subcommittee, I have made this issue a top priority,” Begich said in the April 8 press release. “After relying on just one operational icebreaker for years, having the Polar Star back up and running is great news. But with the increased marine traffic through the Arctic and energy exploration underway in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, there is no question we need more icebreakers to protect our nation’s economic and national security interests. I look forward to continuing to work with Sen. Cantwell so we can get the commitment to build a new class of heavy icebreakers to meet our nation’s needs while keeping options open for our two remaining Polar-class icebreakers.”
Sequestration Asked whether federal budget cuts, commonly referred to as “sequestration,” would impact the U.S. icebreaker program, Begich told Petroleum News March 27 that although sequestration may impact plans to upgrade U.S. icebreaker capabilities for the Arctic, he sensed that plans to renovate two existing icebreakers and to develop a new icebreaker are still moving forward.
“The planning money is still there and there seems to be a much more significant commitment from the White House, recognizing that Coast Guard capacity, including icebreakers in the Arctic, is crucial for long-term development,” Begich said.
—Alan Bailey
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