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USCG commandant reviews cutter plans Admiral Papp tells senators Shell showing an ‘over abundance of caution’ with 22 vessels planned for work in Chukchi, Beaufort Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Admiral Robert Papp, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, provided an update Aug. 6 in Kodiak on the Coast Guard’s plans for cutter coverage in Alaska, and on its summer oversight of Shell’s planned Arctic drilling.
Papp said he thinks Shell will have “everything in place and ready to go in an over abundance of precaution in case something happens” during the company’s planned drilling this summer in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska.
Papp, testifying at a field hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, was asked by subcommittee Chair Mary Landrieu, D-La., about preparedness for a worst-case event in the Arctic based on the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.
The response to that disaster, Landrieu noted, was 47,000 personnel and some 7,000 vessels.
“I don’t think you have nearly 7,000 vessels anywhere close,” the senator said, asking Papp how the Coast Guard plans to be ready “in the event that something terrible happens.”
Papp said that the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior have reviewed Shell’s oil spill response plans.
And while there are lessons to be learned from the Macondo disaster, Papp said, the Deepwater Horizon was basically “there by itself for the most part” prior to the explosion while “Shell is going to have up there 22 vessels. ... They will have everything in place and ready to go in an over abundance of precaution in case something happens.”
The admiral also noted that Shell will be drilling in about 150 feet of water, as opposed to the Macondo well, which was in about 5,000 feet of water. That means you don’t necessarily have to have remotely operated vehicles, “you can actually put divers out,” Papp said.
He also said that Shell believes the reservoirs they will be drilling into are under much less pressure than those at Macondo, “so to a certain extent you’re ... comparing apples and oranges.”
The Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement will have to sign off on response plans before Shell starts drilling, he said.
Icebreaker issues Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a member of the subcommittee, had requested the hearing in Alaska and both she and Landrieu had questions for the admiral on icebreakers, and on the overall capabilities of the Coast Guard’s fleet to operate in Alaska.
Landrieu asked how the U.S. icebreaker fleet compares with its competitors, and how far behind the U.S. is.
Papp acknowledged that the U.S. icebreaker fleet is “in woeful condition right now.”
“Healy is the one bright spot because Healy is only about a dozen years old and is in good shape,” he said, adding that the senators are “fully aware of the dreadful condition of Polar Sea and Polar Star (the Coast Guard’s only heavy-duty icebreakers).
“They’re well past their service life, very difficult and expensive to maintain, and I’ve had limited funding in order to be able to deal with them,” he said.
But money has been transferred back into the Coast Guard’s budget for fiscal year 2013 “which will give us sufficient funds to operate Healy properly and to operate one of the polars,” Papp said, and with some money from past budget cycles, Polar Star is in a Seattle shipyard now undergoing renovation and will be back in service in 2013.
“So it will give us one heavy breaker (Polar Star) and one medium breaker (Healy) and that’s my bridging strategy over the next probably decade until we get the new polar icebreaker built,” Papp said.
The cost of the new icebreaker is estimated at $800 million to $1 billion, he told Landrieu, based on costs of icebreakers in other countries and on what Canada is allocating to build their new icebreakers.
He said Russia has in the neighborhood of a dozen heavy icebreakers; Canada has four heavy icebreakers; the U.S. has two heavy duty icebreakers, both currently out of service, “and we’re rapidly working to get Polar Star” back into service.
Icebreaking concerns Murkowski asked Papp whether “the practical reality that we do not have a polar class icebreaker” compromises the Coast Guard’s mission capability, both for its current Arctic Shield and for other missions.
Papp said he had three levels of concern in the Arctic: this summer, the next decade and the long term.
For right now, the admiral said, “We are well prepared, because ... we have multimission assets that we can deploy that are very capable and that are sufficient for the level of human activity that’s going on this summer (in Alaska’s Arctic) and perhaps for the next three or four summers.”
The Coast Guard doesn’t expect the Arctic to be ice free during the summer until probably 2030.
“So our multimission assets — our helicopters, our fixed-wing aircraft, our national security cutters — these are all very versatile assets that we can apply during the temporary times that there’s human activity up there,” Papp said.
With the Healy available and the Polar Star due back in service next year, Papp said the Coast Guard would “be able to respond to the types of challenges that we’re facing over the next 10 years.”
National security cutters The Bertholf, the first of the Coast Guard’s national security cutters, was commissioned in 2008 and is participating in Arctic Shield, the Coast Guard’s 2012 summer operation plan for Alaska. That plan requires a flight deck-equipped cutter to be present in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to respond to oil spill cleanup and participate in search and rescue.
He said the national security cutters will replace the 12 high-endurance cutters the Coast Guard currently has, with National security cutter No. 6 is in the FY13 budget.
The Coast Guard has 41 major ships and those will be replaced by 33 major ships, Papp said.
While there won’t be as many major ships in the new fleet, many of the ships in the legacy fleet are only putting in “about two-thirds of the underway days that we program for because of major casualties and breakdowns.”
The youngest of the Coast Guard’s high-endurance cutters is more than 40 years old, putting those ships “well beyond senior citizen status,” Papp said, comparing that to the navy, where service life is usually about 25 years.
A lot of the current cutters were built in the 1960s and so there’s a lot of 1950s technology in those ships, “many components that you just can’t get spare parts for nowadays unless they’re hand manufactured,” he said.
“So when we have a breakdown, part of the problem is it takes us so long to get replacement parts and put them back into service that we lose those underway days and our effectiveness out there.”
When the shipbuilding project is complete the Coast Guard will “basically have two major cutters: the national security cutter and the offshore patrol cutter,” which will replace the high-endurance and medium-endurance cutters, Papp said.
The current medium-endurance cutters can’t operate in the Arctic or in the Bering Sea, but requirements for the new offshore patrol cutters include that they be able to operate, to launch small boats and land and launch helicopters, in “sea state 5” which will allow them to operate in the Bering Sea, he said.
Right now, only 12 of the Coast Guard’s 41 major ships, the high-endurance cutters, can operate in Alaska, Papp said, but when the new fleet is complete, all 33 cutters will be able to work Alaska waters.
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