Company plans gravel island to extract Arctic offshore oil

Northstar Island, an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, is a site of oil and gas drilling. (U.S. Department of the Interior)

Company plans gravel island to extract Arctic offshore oil

12/13/2015    By DAN JOLING      Fire Engineering

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Arctic offshore drilling by Royal Dutch Shell PLC drew protests on two continents this year, but a more modest proposal for extracting petroleum where polar bears roam has moved forward with much less attention.

While Shell proposed exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska's northwest coast, a Texas oil company wants to build a gravel island as a platform for five or more extraction wells that could tap oil 6 miles from shore in the Beaufort Sea.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is deciding how to assess the environmental effect of a production plan for the Liberty Project by Hilcorp Alaska LLC, a subsidiary of Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co.

A successful well would mean the first petroleum production in federal Arctic waters.

Hilcorp's plan for a 23-acre gravel island, about the size of 17.4 football fields, has drawn mixed reviews from conservationists and outright condemnation from environmentalists who believe the oil should stay in the ground.

Global warming is melting sea ice habitat beneath polar bears, walrus and ice seals, said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

"The impacts of an oil spill on top of that could be devastating and would be nearly impossible to clean up," she said.....

....Hilcorp would create the island in Foggy Island Bay, 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America. Last year, Hilcorp purchased 50 percent of Liberty assets from BP Exploration Alaska, which drilled at the site in 1997 and discovered an estimated 120 million barrels of recoverable oil.

BP considered building a gravel island and also "ultra-extended reach drilling" from shore. The drilling type was deemed technically unfeasible, Hilcorp spokeswoman Lori Nelson said.

Hilcorp would place conventional wells on the island, positioning them over the oil bearing rock sitting under the ocean floor.

"It's proven to be a safe and effective means for oil and gas development in the Arctic," Nelson said by email. "Alaska has a 30-year record of safely operating offshore in the Arctic."....

....For the Liberty project, trucks carrying gravel would travel by ice road to a hole cut in sea ice. The trucks would deposit 83,000 cubic yards of gravel into 19 feet of water. The work surface would be 9.3 acres surrounded by a wall, providing a barrier to ice, waves and wildlife.....

....Residents, Epstein said, worry that islands will affect the migration patterns of bowhead whales harvested by subsistence hunters. Because the oil would come from federal waters, residents would not see revenues, but would be the ones most harmed by any spill.

The project is near the Beaufort Boulder Patch, an area of undersea boulders where kelp and algae grow in contrast to the otherwise soft ocean bottom.

The environmental review won't be completed until at least 2017, and production could be several more years off.

At the end of production, Hilcorp says it would plug the wells and remove slope protection, allowing ice and waves to erode the island.    entire article here

 

Federal agency dings Shell for 2012 oil rig mishap in Arctic

The conical drilling unit Kulluk sits grounded 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City

Federal agency dings Shell for oil rig mishap in Arctic

By DAN JOLING   Fire Engineering    05/28/15

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — As Royal Dutch Shell PLC seeks permits for exploratory oil drilling off Alaska's northwest coast, a federal agency has concluded the company underestimated risk the last time it moved drill rigs to Arctic waters.

A National Transportation Safety Board report issued Thursday said the probable cause of the grounding of the company's mobile drilling vessel, the Kulluk, in 2012 was "Shell's inadequate assessment of the risk for its planned tow" across the Gulf of Alaska.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said by email the company is reviewing the report but has already made changes and "engaged extensively with the regulators on that topic."

A revised operations plan provides more oversight of contractors and better access for contractor employees to tell Shell how to improve operations, he said.

The company also took the recommendation of the Interior Department and used a third-party auditor to review its 2015 operation plan, Smith said. An audit of operations in real time also is planned.

In 2013, NTSB representatives sat in on weeks of inquiry led by the Coast Guard, which concluded last year that poor risk assessment and management were among factors that led to the grounding of the rig.

Shell officials have regularly pointed out that the company's 2012 problems were tied to transportation issues, not drilling. The company hopes to resume exploratory offshore drilling this year in the Chukchi Sea.

The Interior Department is in the process of deciding whether to grant the necessary drilling permits to Shell. Smith says there is no correlation between the grounding of the Kulluk and the remaining permits needed by Shell for that drilling.

Arctic offshore drilling is strongly opposed by environmental groups in the region threatened my climate change. Critics say oil companies can't clean up major spills, especially in cold, dark, remote Arctic waters far from shore-based infrastructure common in offshore drilling areas such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Petroleum companies want to tap reserves estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey at 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

Shell in 2012 used the Kulluk to drill in the Beaufort Sea and the Noble Discoverer to drill in the Chukchi.

At the conclusion of the open water season, Shell towed the Kulluk, a conical barge 266 feet in diameter, to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.

The Kulluk, behind the 360-foot Aiviq, on Dec. 21, 2012, departed Dutch Harbor for a Seattle shipyard. The tow plan called for staying within 200 miles of the coast, allowing for easier search and rescue, despite the potential for rougher water.

On Dec. 27, as sea swells reached 25 feet, the tow line broke. Within five hours, mechanical problems shut down the Aiviq's four engines.

Five days of attempting to corral the Kulluk with the repaired Aiviq, a Coast Guard cutter and hired tugs proved unsuccessful. The drill rig ran aground Dec. 31, 2012, off Sitkalidak Island near Kodiak. .....  more here 

 

Shell's Polar Pioneer rig juts out into the West Waterway of Seattle's Duwamish River.

State To Shell: Long-Term Moorage Of Arctic Drill Rig Unconstitutional

KUOW.org      By John Ryan       May 22, 2015 

State officials said Friday that it's unconstitutional for Shell Oil to store its Arctic drilling rig at the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources sent a letter to Shell Friday, informing the energy giant that short-term mooring of Shell's Polar Pioneer rig at the Port is fine.

But the state constitution prohibits long-term mooring outside of harbors.

The Polar Pioneer, a massive floating platform 400 feet long and 292 feet wide, is more than twice as wide as the official harbor area at Terminal 5, where it arrived last week. And for most of Terminal 5's length, its 130-foot-wide harbor area is completely covered by a dock that extends over the water and the state-owned land beneath it.

The Polar Pioneer juts out into the West Waterway of the Duwamish River, where long-term private use is forbidden by the state constitution. ("The state shall never give, sell or lease to any private person, corporation or association any rights whatever in the waters beyond such harbor lines," Article XV reads.)

"A ship could moor long-term inside the harbor line but not outside the harbor line," DNR spokesman Joe Smillie said. "The state constitution is pretty explicit in forbidding the state from giving, selling or leasing the rights to use the waters outside harbor lines for long-term moorage or other commercial uses."

Smillie said DNR determines what constitutes "long-term" on a case-by-case basis.

The DNR letter asked Shell how long it plans to keep its rig at Terminal 5 and requested an answer by June 1.

N. America’s Oil And Gas Industry Has Taken Over 7 Million Acres Of Land Since 2000

CREDIT: Science/AAAS

North America’s Oil And Gas Industry Has Taken Over 7 Million Acres Of Land Since 2000

by Katie Valentine     April 24, 2015   Climate Progress

Millions of acres of land across the U.S. and Canada has been taken over by oil and gas development in the last 12 years, according to a new study.

The study, published Friday in Science, tallied up the amount of land that’s been developed to house drilling well pads, roads, and other oil and gas infrastructure in 11 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. It found that between 2000 and 2012, about 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) have been turned over to oil and gas development, a stretch of land that, combined, is equal to three Yellowstone National Parks.

This land takeover can have ecological consequences, according to the report.

“Although small in comparison with the total land area of the continent, this important land use is not accounted for and creates additional pressures for conserving rangelands and their ecosystem functions,” the report states. “The distribution of this land area has negative impacts: increasing fragmentation that can sever migratory pathways, alter wildlife behavior and mortality, and increase susceptibility to ecologically disruptive invasive species.”

Most of the land converted into drilling operations was cropland and rangeland — a term that encompasses prairies, grassland, shrubland, and other ecosystem types — and roughly 10 percent was woodland. Wetlands, according to the report, were mostly spared by oil and gas developers, though a very small amount have been converted into oil and gas sites.

Land takeover due to oil and gas development can have a number of negative consequences, the report states. It removes vegetation that’s important for food, habitat, and carbon storage, and it also fragments ecosystems in such a way that can disrupt the natural behavior of wildlife....

... “The point we’re trying to make with this paper is not so much that some huge fraction of current land area has been de-vegetated, as much as the trajectory of drilling, (consuming) a half-million acres per year,” he said. “If we continue that to 2050, you get to some seriously big amounts of land.”...   more here