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Shell ready for deeper drilling; Fennica has reached the Chukchi
Shell has applied to the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement for a modification to the company’s drilling permit for the Burger J well, to allow the company to drill into potential hydrocarbon bearing zones, company spokeswoman Megan Baldino confirmed to Petroleum News in an Aug. 12 email. The existing permit prohibits drilling into hydrocarbons because, when Shell was ready to start drilling, the company did not have its well capping stack available in the Chukchi, as part of the company’s oil spill prevention and response arrangements. The capping stack can be fitted onto a wellhead to prevent the escape of oil, should a well blowout emergency occur during drilling operations and the well’s blowout preventer fail.
The capping stack is being carried by the icebreaker M/V Fennica, which suffered a gash in its hull after leaving Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands in early July. The Fennica had to transit to Portland, Oregon, to have the damage repaired but has now returned north with the capping stack on board. The Fennica is now in the Chukchi Sea, Baldino said.
The semi-submersible drilling rig Transocean Polar Pioneer is drilling the Burger J well. The drilling crew completed the well’s mudline cellar on the weekend of Aug. 8-9 and is now progressing the top portion of the well, Baldino said. The mudline cellar is a large hole in the seafloor used to house the wellhead, including the blowout preventer.
Shell is drilling in the Burger prospect, a 25-mile-diameter geologic structure 70 miles northwest of the Chukchi coastal village of Wainwright. The prospect is known to contain a major pool of natural gas and Shell hopes to find oil under the gas. The company had planned to drill two wells, the Burger J well and the Burger V well this year. But Shell’s authorization from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the minor, unintended disturbance of polar bears and walruses prohibits simultaneous drilling operations less than 15 miles apart. That prohibition eliminates the concurrent drilling of both the J and the V wells - Shell CEO Ben van Beurden has recently indicated that his company now only anticipates drilling one well in 2015.
But if Shell is able to start drilling the Burger V well this year, it will do so using the Noble Discoverer.
“Whatever we don’t accomplish in the summer ahead we would plan to finish in 2016,” Baldino said.
Protests In assembling its drilling fleet, Shell has had to run the gauntlet of environmentalist protests, conducted by people who say that drilling for oil in the Arctic offshore poses too great a risk to the Arctic marine environment. The company has faced protests in both Portland, where the Fennica was repaired, and at the Port of Seattle, a staging port for Shell’s fleet. The U.S. Coast Guard has now augmented a series of safety zones that it is enforcing around Shell’s vessels by announcing a 500-meter safety zone around the Noble Discoverer. No unauthorized vessel may enter the safety zone - the Coast Guard says that lawful protests can be conducted outside the zone.
Following the nightmare of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and given heightened concerns about offshore Arctic drilling safety, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has been putting into practice new stringent safety requirements for Shell’s Chukchi Sea operations. On Aug. 6 the agency announced that it had stationed inspectors on both the Polar Pioneer and the Noble Discoverer, to monitor operations on the rigs.
Van Beurden — a personal journey According to a report on the BBC website, van Beurden told the British news organization that he recognizes the “increased risk profile” of drilling in the Arctic.
“It is also much more unforgiving in terms of climate, weather, etc. It is also, by the way, the particular reservoir that we are going to explore in, one that is - from a technical perspective - relatively easy. So you have to make a judgment: ‘Can I do this in a responsible way?’” van Beurden told the BBC. “That is a bit of personal journey that I had to go through as well and many others associated with the project - we believe that we can responsibly explore for hydrocarbons in Alaska. Whether that means that we can develop this in a way that makes commercial sense remains to be seen.”
But court actions continue, relating to Shell’s operations.
On Aug. 10 two judges in the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit turned down a request by a group of environmental organizations to place an injunction against the regulations, under which the Fish and Wildlife Service issued its authorization to Shell for wildlife disturbance. The organizations had appealed the regulations in federal District Court but on July 23 District Court Judge Sharon Gleason rejected the appeal, which has now been elevated to the 9th Circuit. The environmental organization had requested an injunction while the case was still being reviewed by the court.
- ALAN BAILEY
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