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Shell remains intent on Alaska program Company not drilling this year but plans ice gouge survey and continuing environmental studies; reflects on 2012 activities Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Shell remains committed to its exploration program in the Alaska Arctic offshore, Michael Macrander, Shell’s science team lead in Alaska, assured the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Arctic Open Water Meeting on March 7.
“We, Shell, have not lost our appetite for exploration in the Alaska offshore,” Macrander said.
Company officials have previously commented that, with potentially huge oil and gas resources under Alaska’s Arctic seas, Shell sees exploration of the region as strategic to the company’s search for new petroleum reserves. But the company has experienced a series of setbacks in its Alaska program, culminating in the grounding in the Gulf of Alaska of its Arctic floating drilling platform, the Kulluk.
Ice-gouge surveys With the Kulluk refloated and now bound for Asia for repairs, and with the Noble Discoverer, the drillship that Shell is using in the Chukchi Sea, also heading to Asia for repair work, Shell has already decided not to drill in Alaska waters in 2013. But the company does plan to conduct surveys in the Chukchi Sea this summer, using sonar equipment to map ice-gouge patterns in the seafloor, Macrander said.
“It’s essentially surveying the sea bottom to look for the typical scars or gouges that ice keels make in the seafloor,” he said.
The purpose of the ice-gouge surveys is to determine the patterns and depths of the gouges, to enable the design of subsea pipelines, ensuring pipeline protection that will prevent pipeline damage from sea ice. Shell has already conducted surveys of this type in previous years but the company needs several years’ worth of data in order to assess the relative frequency and depths of new gouges, Macrander explained.
This year’s surveys will take place over Shell’s Chukchi Sea Burger prospect and over areas to the south and east of that prospect, Macrander said.
Pauline Ruddy from Shell said that the surveys would likely amount to about 600 line miles, taking two to three weeks to accomplish, depending on the weather.
Other activities Macrander said that Shell is also considering some other possible offshore activities for this year’s open-water season, although time is now running short to put in place the permitting and other arrangements needed for the activities to happen.
“There are numbers of operations and activities that we have been pushing off into future years in order to be able to focus on drilling in 2012 and 2013, so … there are conversations going on about other activities that we might be able to do this year,” he said.
Shell has been considering doing some geotechnical borings in the seafloor, but that activity is now unlikely to happen, Macrander said.
This year there will be a continuing full implementation of the offshore acoustic monitoring systems that Shell, ConocoPhillips and Statoil are funding to monitor marine mammal activities. And all Shell vessels will carry protected species observers. Shell will also operate a nearshore aerial survey program in the summer of 2013, watching for and recording marine mammal activity. Macrander said that sound from the sonar equipment used for ice-gouge surveys is unlikely to impact marine mammals because the sound frequency will be higher than the hearing range of the animals.
And Shell will continue to operate a data acquisition and management system that enables the real-time overlaying of ice maps derived from satellite data with weather forecasts, vessel movements and other information pertinent to offshore activities, Macrander said.
Activities in 2012 Macrander also reviewed Shell’s activities in the Arctic during the 2012 open water season, the season during which the company drilled a top-hole well section in the Burger prospect in the Chukchi Sea and a top-hole well section in the Sivulliq prospect in the Beaufort Sea.
A drilling support vessel laid drillship anchors at the Burger prospect between Aug. 8 and 10, with the drillship Noble Discoverer then anchoring on location on Sept. 7, Macrander said. The drillship subsequently had to move off location because of an encroaching ice floe but returned on Sept. 21 to commence drilling on Sept. 23. Drilling ended on Oct. 26, with the drilling vessel departing south on Oct. 28.
In the Beaufort Sea, anchor setting at the Sivulliq prospect took place between Aug. 18 and 22. The Kulluk arrived on location on Sept. 25 after the end of the Cross Island subsistence whale hunt. The start of drilling was delayed until Oct. 3 because of a late start to the Kaktovik whale hunt. Drilling ended in the Beaufort Sea on Oct. 27.
Macrander said that the delay in the Kaktovik hunt had resulted from some issues in the community and that, following negotiations, Shell had been able to move its rig into position while the hunt was still in progress. However, the drilling did not start until the villagers had obtained their last whale, he said.
“We want to express our appreciation for all of the willingness to talk and to work together, to make things work for everybody,” Macrander said.
Animal monitoring All of the vessels involved in Shell’s Arctic operations carried protected species observers, keeping watch for marine mammals. And, with as many as 57 observers deployed, the observers completed in total nearly 26,000 hours of watch-time, Macrander said.
Arrays of offshore acoustic recorders in the Beaufort Sea detected many bowhead whale calls, with the pattern of call locations indicating that the axis of the annual whale migration lay a little further offshore than normal early in the season. Curiously, however, there was a shoreward movement of the migration axis after Shell’s operations started, Macrander said. And there were some whale calls detected within a couple of kilometers of Shell’s Beaufort Sea drilling operation, he said.
Shell placed subsea acoustic recorders at a series of distances from the drilling operations in both the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, to gain insights into the types and levels of sound propagated through the water from a variety of different drilling activities. However, an attempt to characterize the Sivulliq drilling operation as a sound source ended after about 10 days when a storm broke the in-water sound recording system, Macrander said.
In addition to participating in communications centers in all coastal villages, to help achieve coordination between subsistence hunting and industrial activities, Shell worked with local subsistence advisors, embedded in the communities.
“Their job is to keep a finger on the pulse of what hunting activities are going on, what animal movements are going on, so that we can get that information and we can adjust our programs, such that we avoid impacts to hunting,” Macrander said.
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