Shell’s drilling program remains in a holding pattern, with the drilling fleet at Dutch Harbor, while the company waits for the sea ice to clear from the area of its planned drilling site in the Chukchi Sea.
“Sea ice still lingers over our prospects and the earliest entry still appears to be the first week in August,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Petroleum News in a July 25 email.
Drilling permits
Shell also still needs drilling permits from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. The issue of those permits will require Coast Guard certification of the Arctic Challenger, the oil containment barge that Shell plans to station in the Arctic as part of its oil spill contingency arrangements.
“We are making good progress on the containment barge and working closely with the Coast Guard to present final construction projects for sign-off as they are completed,” Smith said.
And the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to intimate its position on Shell’s request to change the air quality permit for the Noble Discoverer, the drillship that Shell plans to use in the Chukchi Sea. Shell has also requested changes to the air permit for the Kulluk, the floating drilling platform that the company wants to use for its Beaufort Sea drilling. However, under the terms of the Kulluk permit, Shell can use the rig while EPA reviews the change request.
Shell had been planning to drill up to two wells in the Beaufort Sea and up to three wells in the Chukchi Sea during this year’s Arctic open water season. The delayed start to the drilling will likely result in the completion of fewer wells than the company had intended, Smith told Petroleum News July 26. However, the company will probably drill some top holes at some drilling locations, to achieve a head start on drilling in 2013, Smith said.
Challenger certification
In a couple of recent emails to Petroleum News Cmdr. Christopher O’Neil of the U.S. Coast Guard has explained the situation regarding the certification of the Arctic Challenger, characterized by O’Neil as “a unique vessel.”
In December, the Coast Guard had accepted a proposal by Shell to certify the barge under the standard for a floating production installation. But in early July, Shell, saying that the barge could not meet that standard, proposed to the Coast Guard that the certification should instead be done under the standard for an offshore mobile drilling unit. Certification is required because of significant modifications to the barge as a consequence of retrofitting the new containment system.
The U.S. Coast Guard has accepted Shell’s proposal for the change in the certification standard, O’Neil said.
“The Coast Guard accepted this proposal on July 13, 2012, and requested Shell provide calculations demonstrating compliance with that standard,” O’Neil wrote in a July 25 email. “The Coast Guard is still awaiting data it requested from Shell.”
And with construction on the vessel not yet complete, the Coast Guard cannot yet certify the vessel for safe operation, O’Neil wrote in an email on July 20.
“Major safety and operational systems are still being installed, tested and certified, and required tests such as an inclining experiment have not yet been performed by the shipyard,” O’Neil wrote. “As construction items and plans are completed by Shell and the shipyard, the Coast Guard and ABS (the American Bureau of Shipping) have inspectors standing by to review and inspect them.”
Safety systems
O’Neil said that major safety systems such as the primary and emergency power; and fire detection and extinguishing systems have not yet been completed. Coast Guard inspectors have been working closely with the shipyard — for certification the Coast Guard must confirm that the vessel provides for the safety of crew and workers on board in the conditions anticipated in the area of operations.
O’Neil explained that the originally proposed floating production installation certification requires the vessel to have an anchoring system capable of handling a 100-year storm, on the assumption that the fixed structure would not be able to move out of a storm’s path. The mobile offshore drilling unit certification, for a vessel able to move out of the way of a storm if necessary, only needs a mooring design to cope with a 10-year storm.
However, although the American Bureau of Shipping, the organization setting the certification standards, has said that it will apply the 10-year storm criterion to the Arctic Challenger, bearing in mind that the vessel would not be fixed in one location, the bureau will require minimum environmental standards for the vessel, as would be required for a fixed facility, O’Neil said.
