One of Shell Oil’s two Arctic drilling rigs is beached on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, threatening environmental damage from a fuel spill and calling into question Shell’s plans to resume drilling in the treacherous waters north of Alaska in the summer.
The rig, the Kulluk, broke free from a tow ship in stormy seas and ran aground Monday night. The Coast Guard was leading an effort to keep its more than 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel and lubricants from spilling onto the rocky shoreline.
The Kulluk’s 18 crew members had been evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on Saturday after the rig first went adrift in high winds and rough seas.
The grounding was the latest in a series of mishaps to befall Shell’s ambitious plans to prospect for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the North Slope of Alaska.
Shell halted drilling for oil in September after equipment failures, unexpected ice floes, operational missteps and regulatory delays forced the company to scale back its plans.
Its drilling rigs completed two shallow pilot holes and left the Arctic in late fall to return to Seattle for maintenance work but have encountered problems in transit.
If the Kulluk, which Shell upgraded in recent years at a cost of nearly $300 million, is wrecked or substantially damaged, it will be hard for the company to find a replacement and receive the numerous government permits needed to resume drilling in July, as planned.
Under Department of Interior rules governing Arctic drilling, the company must have two rigs on site at all times to provide for a backup vessel to drill a relief well in case of a blowout, an uncontrolled escape of oil or gas.
A separate containment system designed to collect oil in the case of a well accident failed during testing, preventing Shell from drilling into oil-bearing formations during its abbreviated exploration season last summer and fall.
The Kulluk, which does not have a propulsion system of its own, ran into trouble late last week when its tow ship, the Aiviq, lost engine power and the towline separated. A Coast Guard cutter and other ships arrived, and crews struggled through Monday, in seas up to 35 feet, to reconnect tow lines to the rig, succeeding several times. But each time the lines separated.
On Monday night, the Kulluk, 266 feet in diameter, broke free from one tow ship and the Coast Guard ordered a second ship to disconnect, fearing for the safety of its crew.
The Kulluk is sitting on the southeast coast of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island separated by the Sitkalidak Strait from the far larger Kodiak Island to the west. The nearest town, Old Harbor, is across the strait on Kodiak Island; it has a population of about 200 people. The strait is home to a threatened species of sea lion.
– source nytimes.com