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Fleet is in motion Shell moving assets for Chukchi Sea drilling; Greenpeace boards drilling vessel Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Shell is steadily moving ahead with the assembly of the fleet that it will need for drilling in the Chukchi Sea during this year’s Arctic open water season. The two drill ships that the company plans to use in the Chukchi are heading for the port of Seattle, to load up prior to moving north. And the company has conducted tests of its Arctic containment dome, the device designed to gather oil from a leaking well, should a well loss-of-control incident occur during drilling.
Shell plans to drill in 2015, provided that the company succeeds in obtaining all necessary permits and in clearing any remaining legal obstacles, company spokeswoman Megan Baldino told Petroleum News on April 7. Some drilling assets are en-route for the United States, Baldino said, adding that some assets associated with Shell’s oil spill contingency plans are already in Alaska. Baldino said that the timeline for the deployment of assets to the Chukchi would be similar to that of Shell’s 2012 Arctic drilling program. In 2012 Shell planned to move its fleet north into the Arctic in early July, although unusually heavy sea ice in the Chukchi Sea that year delayed operations.
Shell plans to conduct ice overflights to observe the breakup of sea ice in the summer and has applied to the National Marine Fisheries Service for an authorization for the unintended disturbance of marine mammals by these flights.
Two drilling vessels This year Shell plans to use two drilling vessels in the Chukchi - the Noble Discoverer and the Polar Pioneer. In 2012 the company used just the Noble Discoverer in the Chukchi, while deploying the Kulluk floating drilling platform to the Beaufort Sea for exploration drilling there. This year Shell has no plans for drilling in the Beaufort. In 2012 the Kulluk ran aground in the Gulf of Alaska after the end of the drilling season and has since been scrapped.
Among the permits that Shell needs is an exploration plan, approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. In association with an appeal against the Chukchi Sea lease sale in which Shell purchased its Chukchi leases, a court injunction banning Chukchi Sea lease related activities had delayed BOEM’s ability to complete its exploration plan review. However, with the issue by BOEM on March 31 of a new record of decision affirming the sale, the review process has presumably been able to proceed.
But Shell faces some legal uncertainty over an appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals against the company’s Chukchi Sea oil spill prevention and response plan. The court heard oral arguments in this case in August 2014 but has since remained silent.
Greenpeace boarding On April 6 a team of Greenpeace protestors used ropes and harnesses to climb aboard the drilling vessel Polar Pioneer, under tow in the Pacific Ocean about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii, and set up camp on the underside of the vessel’s main deck. On the next day Shell filed a complaint in the federal District Court in Alaska, seeking an injunction against the boarding and against future Greenpeace interference with vessels operated for Shell in conjunction with the company’s outer continental shelf operations.
“These acts are far from peaceful demonstrations,” Baldino told Petroleum News. “Boarding a moving vessel on the high seas is extremely dangerous and jeopardizes the safety of all concerned, including both the people working aboard and the protesters themselves. While we recognize the right to voice an objection to our planned Alaska exploration program, we can’t condone Greenpeace’s unlawful and unsafe tactics.”
In 2012 Shell obtained an injunction from the District Court, banning Greenpeace from trespassing on any of Shell’s vessels or entering specified safety zones around the vessels.
Containment system trial On April 6 the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported that BSEE Director Brian Salerno and Interior Assistant Secretary Janice Schneider had spent two days observing trials of Shell’s containment dome. The equipment is deployed from a converted barge called the Arctic Challenger. Baldino said that the trials took place in Puget Sound, in the Pacific Northwest.
“Though Shell successfully showed that they can deploy the containment dome, we will remain engaged during future inspections, reviews, tests, and drills of Shell’s safety equipment and their capabilities to deploy them in an emergency situation,” Salerno commented. “This work is to ensure that, should drilling occur, Shell can conduct source containment operations safely and in a manner appropriately protective of the environment.”
Delays in the completion of the newly developed containment dome system and subsequent problems with the testing of the system became a significant problem for Shell during its 2012 Chukchi Sea drilling season.
For the 2015 drilling season Shell has said that it plans to position the Arctic Challenger in Kotzebue Sound, offshore northwestern Alaska - the company has applied to Alaska’s Division of Mining Land and Water for a permit to place four mooring buoys near Goodhope Bay in Kotzebue Sound. In its permit application Shell says that it maintains subsistence advisors in the villages of Kotzebue, Deering and Buckland to minimize conflict with local subsistence activities by informing the drilling team of subsistence activities.
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