Shell tells MMS about safety precautions

In mid-May, following the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico, Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Company, sent a letter to U.S. Minerals Management Service director Elizabeth Birnbaum describing the safety precautions that the company plans for its operations in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. In addition to explaining the differences between drilling in the relatively shallow waters of the Alaska outer continental shelf and drilling in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Shell outlined the specific technologies that the company believes would prevent a well blowout accident.

Those technologies include downhole technology that ensures hydraulic isolation of an underground oil reservoir, and a two-barrier system within the well to prevent any unintended flow of fluids up the well. The blowout preventer, the device that will sit at a wellhead as a last line of defense against loss of well control, has been extensively inspected and tested, and will undergo further testing before use, Odum said.

Moreover, unlike the well in the Gulf of Mexico incident, Shell’s planned 2010 Arctic wells will be exploratory in nature, and will not be converted for future production operations, Odum said. And any coring of rock samples would be done by drilling a secondary, bypass hole, after using the initial well hole to determine parameters such as reservoir pressures and fluid content.

Odum also emphasized several safety aspects of Shell’s program, including plans for curtailing drilling operations when necessary, and a capability to respond within one hour to any oil spill emergency.

And, among the company’s arsenal of oil spill response equipment, Shell will have remote operating submarines and a prefabricated subsea coffer dam. The coffer dam will have technology to prevent clogging by methane hydrate, Odum said.

—Alan Bailey