Alaska... Stranded Shell Rig Towed to Safety

 

The 30-year-old but refurbished Kulluk was grounded during strong storms

 

A Shell oil rig that ran aground on New Year's Eve near an Alaskan island has been towed to safety in a nearby bay. The Kulluk rig reached its anchoring point in Kiliuda Bay, 30 miles (48km) away, after a 12-hour journey.
 

The US Coast Guard says there is no sign of any leakage of the 155,000 gallons (590,000 litres) of oil products it is carrying. The rig was returning from the Beaufort Sea to Seattle when the towing vessel lost power and its line to the rig.

On Monday, the Kulluk was towed from Sitkalidak Island, where it ran aground, by the Aiviq, the same vessel that last month was towing it south for winter maintenance. The rig was pulled at about 4mph  through seas reportedly as high as 15ft .

Martin Padilla, incident commander for the Kulluk responders, told Reuters they would "continue to remain cautious while we assess the Kulluk's condition".

 

"We will not move forward to the next phase until we are confident that we can safely transport the vessel."
Shell has said that the design of the Kulluk - with fuel tanks isolated in the centre of the vessel and encased in heavy steel - makes a significant spill unlikely.

But  environmentalists have said the incident illustrates the risk of drilling for oil in a fragile region.  The rig ran aground amid a controversial and error-prone Arctic drilling season for Shell.  Earlier in the winter, another ship in Shell's oil fleet, the Discoverer, failed to meet US air standards and nearly ran aground in the Aleutian port of Dutch Harbor.

Shell has vowed to fix the issues before the summer drilling season begins. A US House committee has asked the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior to investigate the Kulluk incident.

Shell bought the Kulluk and leased the Noble Discoverer drillship to pursue a plan of opening the Arctic Ocean to an offshore oil industry that one day could rival Alaska’s North Slope or even the Gulf of Mexico in importance. But since purchasing offshore leases in 2005 and 2008, lawsuits, regulatory hurdles, and mishaps have prevented the company from exploring for oil. In 2012, the company finally seemed ready to begin drilling. But it fumbled several times over air permits, Coast Guard certification of an oil-spill response barge, and severe damage to a required piece of oil-spill equipment. In an echo of the current situation, the Noble Discoverer pulled anchor and nearly ran aground this summer in Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutian Chain of islands.

All this raises several questions about Arctic drilling, which will be addressed in the weeks and months to come.

1. Assuming the Kulluk is salvaged, will it be ready to drill in 2013, as Shell planned? How extensive will the damage prove to be?

2. What does this mean for offshore Arctic drilling overall? Critics have long argued that drilling in the Arctic Ocean is too dangerous because of harsh conditions and remote locations. The current situation is unfolding just about 50 miles from the Coast Guard’s largest installation in Alaska, Air Station Kodiak. If the Kulluk had run aground more than 1000 miles away on the coast of the North Slope, Shell would be largely on its own. The Coast Guard has no permanent facilities up there, and only one functional ice breaker, the Healy, which is meant primarily for scientific research.

3. Will Shell run into fresh regulatory challenges as it seeks to explore for oil in 2013 and beyond? Will it get to drill in 2013 as planned?

Again, this is a fragile area, frought with dangers to the rigs and the people aboard them. Drilling here also puts the environment in danger and the aquatic and land animals whose survival depends upon it. We know that a serious oil spill would be next to impossible to clean up in that area. Let's hope the intelligent minds who decide these things will reconsider drilling in those particular Alaskan waters..But somehow, I doubt they will.