Shell drill ship to ride out Gulf of Alaska storm
Royal Dutch Shell and a team that includes the Coast Guard have decided the Kulluk drilling rig and the ships holding
it in place with tow lines should wait out another winter storm coming Monday night in the Gulf of Alaska, said Coast
Guard Petty Officer David Mosley. The vessels will seek safe harbor, likely in Port Hobron on Kodiak Island, when the
weather clears, the Coast Guard says. Meanwhile, technicians were being flown to the Kulluk to inspect the towlines
already attached.
The Kulluk and accompanying ships are trying to maintain position offshore about 10 to 20 miles south of Kodiak
Island, according to Shell. The weather cleared temporarily Monday morning when 4-foot seas and 32-mph winds
were reported, a break that allowed crews to secure towlines between the Kulluk, the Alert -- a Crowley Marine tug
normally under contract to Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. to use for spill prevention in Prince Willian Sound -- and a
Shell-contracted vessel, the Aiviq.A new storm is expected to move in Monday night, with winds topping 60 mph and
28-foot seas, according to forecasts.
Update, 12:15 p.m.:Just before noon Monday, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the command team, which includes
the Coast Guard, is still evaluating options on whether to try to get the Kulluk drilling rig to a safe harbor, probably on
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Kodiak Island, or whether to continue to wait out the Gulf of Alaska storms offshore.A morning break in the storms is
not expected to last, he said."Weather is largely in play here. That is something that needs to be considered very
carefully before we make our next move," Smith said.
Update, 11:45 a.m.:
A small contingent of Alaska tribal groups is planning to protest Royal Dutch Shell's Alaska operations at noon today
outside the oil company's Alaska headquarters at the Frontier Building, 36th Avenue and A Street. The effort is being
led by Carl Wassilie of Alaska's Big Village Network, Nikos Pastos of the Center for Water Advocacy and Delice Calcote
of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. The protest organizers say Shell doesn't appear prepared to work in Alaska and that
the Coast Guard also doesn't have enough assets to respond to incidents such as the weekend drifting of the oil
drilling rig Kulluk.
Update, 6:40 a.m.:
Tow lines were
reconnected
overnight from
the Shell drill rig
Kulluk to two
support vessels in
the Gulf of
Alaska, according
to Shell and the
U.S. Coast Guard.
The vessels are
19 miles
southeast of
Kodiak Island,
according to a
joint statement
issued Monday
morning by Shell,
the Coast Guard and others.
The Kulluck is again under tow by the vessel Aiviq and another vessel, the tug Alert, said the statement, issued at
6:06 a.m.
Around 12:45 a.m., the statement said, the Alert "was able to secure the 400-foot line that was previously the tow line
used by the Aiviq. The Alert successfully added tension to the line to test its ability to hold." The Aivik then
reconnected its line to the Kulluk later in the morning, the statement said.
"Difficult weather conditions are anticipated to continue over the next several days. Unified Command is evaluating all
potential options to further secure the vessel until the weather clears," the statement said.
---------------
Sunday night story:
An unmanned mobile oil drilling rig owned by Royal Dutch Shell is adrift -- again -- south of Kodiak Island after it lost towlines
Sunday afternoon from two vessels trying to hold it in place against what have been pummeling winds and high seas, according to
incident management leaders.
A team of 250 people from the Coast Guard, the state of Alaska, Shell, and one of its contractors was hunkered down Sunday,
mainly in Midtown Anchorage's Frontier Building, trying to resolve the ongoing crisis with Shell's drilling rig, the Kulluk.
Before the latest turn for the worse, representatives of Shell, the Coast Guard and the state Department of Environmental
Conservation told reporters in a briefing early Sunday afternoon that the situation was critical, but under control.
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Then towlines from two Shell-contracted support vessels, the Aiviq and the Nanuq, "separated," the joint command team said in a
statement sent out at about 4:30 p.m. The setback happened sometime after 1 p.m., just as commanders were briefing news media
on what appeared at that point to be a successful response after a series of failures. They didn't yet know the towlines had broken
free, said Shell spokesman Curtis Smith, who is part of the unified incident command team.
A third vessel, the tug Alert, which is usually stationed in Prince William Sound as part of an emergency response system, has
arrived on the scene. And another Shell-contracted support ship, the Guardsman, is on location.
"The crew is evaluating all options for reconnecting with the Kulluk," the command team said. Towlines are still attached to the
Kulluk and conceivably could be reattached to nearby ships, Smith said. Shell crews use 10-inch steel cables or synthetic lines that
attach to vessels with hardware, he said.
With the Kulluk crew
evacuated for safety reasons,
there's no one on board to
tend the winches or
maneuver equipment, Sean
Churchfield, Shell's incident
commander and the
company's operations
manager for Alaska, told
reporters earlier on Sunday.
All decisions, including the
evacuation, are being made
by the group as a whole, said
Capt. Paul Mehler, the Coast
Guard's Anchorage-based
commander.
HEAVY SEAS FOIL TOWS
Crews are waiting for a break in the weather to secure the towline, Smith said.
The Gulf of Alaska storm has been fierce, with near-hurricane winds on Saturday night, Mehler said. Only a small lull is predicted
for Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The forecast for Sunday night was 28-foot seas and winds in the
range of 50 mph or more, about what it was on Saturday, said meteorologist Bob Clay. Seas and winds are expected to diminish
early Monday morning, then pick back up later in the day as another storm moves in, he said.
With no towlines securing it in place, the crewless Kulluk was drifting about 25 miles south of Kodiak, Smith said Sunday
evening. He didn't have an estimate on how many hours it would take the Kulluk to reach shore if it continued adrift. A number of
variables, including currents and wind speed, would affect when and where it hit, if it came to that, he noted.
The incident team also must find a safe harbor for the Aiviq, as well as the Kulluk, to undergo inspections and possible repairs
before heading south to Everett, Wash., where the Kulluk had been headed for off-season maintenance before the troubles began.
The $290 million, 266-foot diameter Kulluk is a conical-shaped mobile rig that began drilling a single exploratory well in the
Beaufort Sea this year. But it cannot propel itself, and a series of failures involving it began on Thursday during a stormy Gulf of
Alaska crossing.
The 360-foot, $200 million Aiviq is a new ship commissioned by Shell for its Arctic work, built and owned by Louisiana-based
maritime company Edison Chouest Offshore. It has 24 crew members on board, Smith said.
The Kulluk lost its towline from the Aiviq on Thursday. A second towline was attached for a time, but then early Friday all four
engines on the Aiviq failed. The Coast Guard sent the Alex Haley, a 282-foot cutter. It delivered a towline to the Aiviq, which was
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still attached to the Kulluk, but the sheer mass of the ship and the drilling rig, combined with 40 mph winds and building 35-foot
seas, broke the connection and the line became tangled in the cutter's propeller and damaged it. The Alex Haley turned back to
Kodiak for repair, but now is back at the Kulluk scene.
'FULL INVESTIGATION'
On Saturday, the Kulluk's 18-person crew was safely evacuated to Kodiak in two Coast Guard helicopters. A Coast Guard video
shows the Kulluk bobbing in rolling seas as a helicopter approaches to lower a basket and lift the crew members out, one by one.
The Aiviq's engines were repaired with new fuel injectors, and the Nanuq put a towline on the Kulluk for a time. The Aiviq then
was running with two engines at a time, as a precaution, officials said Sunday.
The towline mishaps and the engine failures are under investigation, Churchfield said. Initial reports suggested that contaminated
fuel might have caused the engines to malfunction, but that hasn't been confirmed through fuel analysis, he said.
"I don't really want to speculate as to the causes of the propulsion failure on the Aiviq," Churchfield said. "We are looking for the
solutions and we will have a full investigation. At this stage, I don't have any firm information to pass onto you."
However, the fuel now being used is from a different tank than that in use when the engines failed, said Shell's Smith.
The plan to use just a single ship to tow the Kulluk was reasonable, given the Aiviq's features, said the Coast Guard's Mehler.
"This type of operation is very normal. With the vessel the size of the Aiviq, with the capabilities of the Aiviq, with four engines,
it was above and beyond what would be required to be able to tow, even in very extreme conditions," the commander said.
Shell did not have to get Coast Guard approval of its towing plan, because the maritime operation was so routine. But the oil
company did consult with the agency about the journey, Mehler said.At the start of Shell's 2012 drilling season, the Aiviq towed
the Kulluk from a shipyard in Washington state to Dutch Harbor though eventually two tugs took over its handling in the Beaufort
Sea, Churchfield said.
A DIFFICULT START
Two crew members on the Aiviq suffered minor injuries at some point, but both are back at work, Churchfield said.
No oil has been spilled during the incident, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Shell has had a difficult experience as it tries to drill offshore in the Alaska Arctic, its first attempt in two decades. It couldn't drill
to oil-rich zones because its novel oil spill containment dome was damaged during testing. Its other drilling rig, a converted log
carrier called the Noble Discoverer, recently was cited by the Coast Guard for problems with safety and pollution discharge
equipment. Mehler ordered it held in Seward while the most serious issues were addressed. While the ship now is free to leave for
Seattle, it remains docked in Seward because it is waiting for escort vessels working on the Kulluk situation, Smith said.
In October 1980, in a situation eerily similar to what is happening now, 18 crew members were evacuated off a jack-up drilling rig
named the Dan Prince as rough seas in the North Pacific 650 miles south of Kodiak threatened to destroy the unit, according to
news reports at the time. Crews couldn't attach a towline. The rig then sank, according to an online listing of rig disasters.
Source Alaska daily News.
Alaskan Storm Claims Victory, Kulluk Drilling Rig Grounds After Tow Lines Fail
.
By Reuters On January 1, 2013
. ..
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A large drill ship belonging to oil major Shell ran aground off Alaska on Monday night after drifting in stormy weather, company and government officials said.
The ship, the Kulluk, broke away from one of its tow lines on Monday afternoon and was driven, within hours, to rocks just off Kodiak Island, where it grounded at about 9 p.m. Alaska time, officials said.
The 18-member crew had been evacuated by the Coast Guard late Saturday because of risks from the ongoing storm.
With winds reported at up to 60 miles an hour and Gulf of Alaska seas of up to 35 feet, responders were unable to keep the ship from grounding, said Coast Guard Commander Shane Montoya, the leader of the incident command team.
“We are now entering into the salvage and possible spill-response phase of this event,” Montoya told a news conference late on Monday night in Anchorage.
There is no known spill and no reports of damage yet, but the Kulluk has about 155,000 gallons of fuel on board, Montoya said.
The grounding of the Kulluk, a conical, Arctic-class drill ship weighing nearly 28,000 gross tons, is a blow to Shell’s $4.5 billion offshore programme in Alaska.
Shell’s plan to convert the area in to a major new oil frontier has alarmed environmentalists and manyAlaska Natives but excited industry supporters.
Environmentalists and Native opponents say the drilling program threatens a fragile region that is already being battered by rapid climate change.
“Shell and its contractors are no match for Alaska’s weather and sea conditions either during drilling operations or during transit,” Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society, said in an email.
“Shell’s costly drilling experiment in the Arctic Ocean needs to be stopped by the federal government or by Shell itself given the unacceptably high risks it poses to both humans and the environment.”
BEDEVILLED
The Kulluk’s woes began on Friday, when the Shell ship towing it south experienced a mechanical failure and lost its connection to the drill vessel.
That ship, the Aivik, was reattached to the Kulluk early on Monday morning, as was a tug sent to the scene by the operator of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. But the Aivik lost its link Monday afternoon, and the tug’s crew could only try to guide the drill ship to a position where, if it grounded, “it would have the least amount of impact to the environment,” Montoya said.
The Kulluk was used by Shell in September and October to drill a prospect in the Beaufort Sea. It was being taken to Seattle for the off-season when the problems began on Friday.
Susan Childs, emergency incident commander for Shell, held out hope that a significant spill from the drill ship was unlikely.
“The unique design of the Kulluk means the diesel fuel tanks are isolated in the center in the vessel and encased in very heavy steel,” she told the news conference.
Shell is waiting for weather to moderate “to begin a complete assessment of the Kulluk,” she said. “We hope to ultimately recover the Kulluk with minimal or no damage to the environment.”
The Kulluk was built in 1983 and had been slated to be scrapped before Shell bought it in 2005. The company has spent $292 million since then to upgrade the vessel.
Shell’s Arctic campaign has been bedevilled by problems. A second drill ship, the Discoverer, was briefly detained in December by the Coast Guard in Seward, Alaska, because of safety concerns. A mandatory oil-containment barge, the Arctic Challenger, failed for months to meet Coast Guard requirements for seaworthiness and a ship mishap resulted in damage to a critical piece of equipment intended to cap a blown well.
(c) 2012 Reuters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Articles:
1.Alert and Aiviq Regain Control of Arctic Drilling Rig Kulluk in Gulf of Alaska Storm [UPDATE]
2.Coast Guard: Crews Battle Fierce Storm While Assisting Disabled Aiviq and Kulluk [Incident Photos]
3.MV Aiviq Breaks Down in Alaska While Towing Shell’s Arctic Drilling Rig
Bron gCaptain
