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Discoverer gearing up Shell drillship in place at Burger drill site after weather related delay Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The drillship Noble Discoverer has refueled for drilling and is moving into position over Shell’s Chukchi Sea Burger prospect, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Petroleum News in a Sept. 6 email. Drilling could commence on Sept. 7 or 8, Smith said. Shell had hoped to start drilling at Burger around Sept. 2, but stormy weather caused the drillship to have to move into a holding position 10 miles south of the drill site until the weather cleared.
The drillship will need to connect to anchors pre-positioned at the drill site before drilling can commence.
Shell now has all the permits that it needs to start drilling. On Aug. 30 the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, or BSEE, gave Shell permission to drill the top portion of its planned Burger well, prior to deployment of the company’s oil containment barge. And the Environmental Protection Agency has sent the company an air permit compliance order, allowing operation of the drillship Noble Discoverer in the Chukchi this year.
Shell’s floating drilling platform, the Kulluk, is in a holding position in the Beaufort Sea, waiting until the end of the subsistence whale hunt in the region of the company’s Beaufort Sea drilling sites before starting to drill at the Sivulliq prospect on the west side of Camden Bay.
Containment barge The permit for the Chukchi Sea Burger well allows Shell to drill to a depth of 1,300 to 1,400 feet, some 4,000 feet or so above the highest zones with hydrocarbons. To drill into a potential hydrocarbon zone, Shell will need to deploy its oil containment barge, the Arctic Challenger. The Arctic Challenger, with new gear designed to gather any oil spilling from a damaged well in the unlikely event of a well blowout, remains in Bellingham, Wash., where it has been undergoing a refit for the installation of the oil containment system. There is no word yet on when exactly the vessel will be ready for use but Smith said that sea trials of the vessel are planned to start shortly.
Shell requires a compliance order for the Noble Discoverer air permit because of requested changes to that permit, changes that the company has characterized as minor in nature and not impacting the overall emissions limits of the drilling operation. Because the drillship has a major air permit, the requested changes will need to go through a public review process, with the compliance order allowing drilling operations to proceed meantime.
Tight timeframe But after a series of delays to the start of its drilling, Shell is running short of time to complete a well in the Chukchi. The company’s exploration plan prohibits any drilling into hydrocarbon bearing zones after Sept. 24, a date that BSEE has viewed as providing sufficient time to drill a relief well before the potential encroachment of sea ice over the drill site, in the event of a well blowout. Based on current sea-ice forecasts, Shell has requested an extension of the drilling deadline by nearly two weeks. However, during an Aug. 30 press conference Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that it would be premature to address Shell’s request until the Arctic Challenger has been certified for use.
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