Just before midnight on New Year's Eve in Alaska, reports of the grounding of Shell's drill rig were confirmed by Shell with some alarming pronouncements--alarming because we can easily imagine such pronouncements during a potentially even more serious spill in the Arctic water of Alaska in the future.
Here's one pretty link for a summary of the story.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
The ship, the Kulluk, broke away from one of its tow lines on Monday afternoon and was driven 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 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 were three minor injuries to people responding to the incident but all personnel have returned to duty...
For up-to-the-minute reports and blogging from Alaska, this link to blog by Phil Munger, Wasilla, is probably the best.
http://my.firedoglake.com/...
Shell also tweeting and putting out reports from United Command. This comment was less than reassuring last night.
“At this time the weather condition does not allow us to move response equipment.”
Yes, Shell, there is weather in Alaska.
11:43 AM PT: Update, 10:25 a.m.:
"The state Department of Environmental Conservation provided details about the area of the Kulluk grounding and the fuel aboard the rig in a situation report e-mailed at 2:42 a.m. Tuesday.
The staging area for the response is at the city of Kodiak harbor, the DEC said. A Coast Guard crew that flew over the site, 500 feet from shore between Ocean Bay and Partition Cove, around midnight didn't see any sign of pollution. Kulluk was carrying 138,000 gallons of ultra low sulfur diesel fuel, 1,000 gallons of aviation fuel and 12,000 gallons of lubricants, the DEC said.
The shore area includes salmon streams. Harbor seals are found in nearby MacDonald Lagoon. Steller's eiders, listed under the Endangered Species Act, may be present near the shore. Partition Cove is within the critical habitat area for both Southwest sea otters and Steller sea lions, which are listed under the act, according to the DEC report.
The coordinates of the grounding site are Latitude 57.01.900N and Longitude 153.06.700W, the DEC said."
The DEC's next update was planned for 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/...
12:08 PM PT: "Shell now says it hopes to drill five exploratory wells in the region during the 2013 drilling season, which begins in mid-July." New York Times
12:14 PM PT: Lisa Demer of the Anchorage Daily News has updated her Kulluk coverage story. Excellent read. She interviewed environmentalists this morning as part of the story:
After news of the grounding broke, Lois Epstein, an engineer and Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society said in an e-mailed statement that Shell was lucky no one died.
“The implications of this very troubling incident are clear – Shell and its contractors are no match for Alaska’s weather and sea conditions either during drilling operations or during transit. 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.”
“We’ve got a pattern of failures,” said Carl Wassilie, a Yup’ik Eskimo who coordinates a grass-roots group called Alaska’s Big Village Network and helped organize a protest Monday outside Shell’s Alaska headquarters. “I’m saying no, there’s no way that I can see any feasibility of drilling in the Arctic, especially with the extreme conditions that we’re seeing, not only with Mother Nature right now but also just the technical aspects of the failures that we’re seeing with the fleet.”
Shell responded that it has backup plans that kick in when problems emerge and that the actual drilling operations this year proceeded safely.
“Flawless operations remain the goal,” Smith said earlier on Monday. “But being a responsible operator also means putting contingencies in place when operations do not go as planned. We have done that.”
12:17 PM PT: The command team has posted its written statements at http://www.kullukresponse.com.
2:24 PM PT: Photo of grounded rig here: http://www.facebook.com/...
http://www.facebook.com/...