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Navy evacuating Arctic ice camp
ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
Cracking of the Arctic sea ice has caused the U.S. Navy to close its Ice Camp Sargo a week earlier than planned, according to a March 25 report in the Navy Times.
The ice camp is a temporary station on a floating Arctic ice sheet. According to a March 23 release from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which was using the camp as a base for testing a new ice tagging system, the camp forms part of the navy’s Ice Exercise 2016, a five-week exercise for assessing the operational readiness of the navy’s submarine force and for supporting scientific research in the Arctic. The BSEE personnel form part of a multi-national team of more than 200 participants from more than 35 organizations supporting more than 25 test objectives at Ice Exercise 2016. The U.S. Navy’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory, based in San Diego, is leading the exercise, which involves two submarines and multiple nations, BSEE said.
Crack through camp The Navy Times said that the camp had been packing up early because of an ice crack observed not far away in the ice sheet. However, the appearance of another crack through the camp location caused the evacuation to be “kicked into high gear,” the Navy Times said. While 40 international researchers and other personnel were evacuated by air, some equipment was left on site for later retrieval. The camp could house up to 70 people at a time, the report said.
BSEE wants to test its ice tagging system for tracking the movement of ice floes in the Arctic, the agency said. The idea is to leave devices equipped with radio and global positioning technology on an ice floe, to track the ice over a period of up to nine months. The devices would be used in the event of an offshore oil spill, to enable spill responders to track the movement of oil trapped under or in sea ice.
“The extreme conditions in the Arctic, especially the presence of sea ice, create unique challenges to the identification, tracking and response to an oil spill, should one occur,” BSEE said.
BSEE oil spill preparedness engineers and specialists at the camp planned to try two methods of deploying the ice tracking devices: an aerial drop of two devices from a helicopter, and the manual placement of a single device using an ice screw.
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