Al Gore criticizes Obama on climate change and 'insane' Arctic drilling

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97. 7/16/15 - Shell Sends Ship W. Key Emergency Response Gear Back To Portland, Will Proceed W. Drilling

Shell officials are still hoping to launch exploratory drilling this month at the company’s Burger prospect, 70 miles off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi Sea, even though a key ship in its fleet was forced back to port before it had even left the harbor last week after a 3-foot-long gash was discovered in its hull.

The company has to send the MSV Fennica to Portland because Terminal 5 at the port of Seattle, where Shell’s two drilling rigs were stored before they departed for Alaska, is a cargo terminal that doesn’t allow heavy repairs. It is expected to take several weeks to repair the Fennica, according to FuelFix. The trip to Portland alone will take more than a week, and the Fennica appears to still be in Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands right now. But Shell has already begun moving its fleet into place in the Chukchi Sea, and does not plan on waiting for the Fennica to return before commencing drilling activities.

The Fennica is one of only two icebreakers in Shell’s 30-ship fleet that are essential for keeping ice away from the drilling rigs. It’s unclear whether or not the US Department of the Interior will give the company the go-ahead to begin drilling, however, given that the Fennica was also carrying critical equipment needed to cap the well in the event of a blowout or other emergency.

Ed. - Emphasis added.

The Coast Guard is reportedly still investigating what caused the 39-inch breach in the Fennica’s hull, but surveys of Dutch Harbor since the ship’s accident have revealed shallower-than-charted areas along the route the ship was taking. Shell appears to have opted for speed over safety in sending the Fennica along the route it did. Some of the charted depths in the Fennica’s path gave it just seven and a half feet of clearance in some areas — even at high tide, as it was when the ship was under way on July 3 and the hull breach was discovered. Shell could have sent the Fennica on a slightly longer route out of Dutch Harbor that would have kept it in deeper water.

EDIT

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/07/16/shell-proceed-arctic-drilling-ship-carrying-critical-emergency-gear-heads-portland-repairs

Ed. - so yeah, ALL OF THE ABOVE!! Let's give them a permit, given their outstanding track record:

The rig was being towed from Dutch Harbor, Alaska to Seattle when its tow vessel lost control of the massive platform during a harsh winter storm. After numerous attempts to secure the equipment failed, it settled near the shore of uninhabited Sitkalidak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska on Monday night and remains there – with nearly 150,000 gallons of fuel and other fluids on board. The Coast Guard is coordinating a 500-plus person response to assess the damage, but neither they nor Shell has any idea when or how they will regain control of the foundering giant.

Adding insult to injury, on Thursday, the Alaska Dispatch reported that the reason Shell was working so feverishly to move the rig in such harsh conditions was to avoid paying millions of dollars in state taxes it would have owed if the rig was still in Alaska waters on January 1.

Far from an isolated incident, the latest fiasco is just the most recent in a litany of technical failures and struggles with Mother Nature that continue to accentuate Shell’s lack of preparedness to operate in the region. As Christopher Helman writes in Forbes, “It would be a comedy of errors, if the stakes weren’t so high.”

EDIT

September: After repeatedly failing to receive Coast Guard approval for its containment barge Shell was forced to postpone exploratory drilling operations until 2013 and settle instead for beginning to drill two non-oil producing preparatory wells.

September: Just one day after beginning its long-awaited preparatory drilling operations,Shell suspends drilling as a massive ice pack covering approximately 360 square miles drifts toward the site.

November: More than a week after preparatory drilling ended for the season, Shell experienced numerous complications as it tried to get its Kulluk rig out of the Beaufort Sea as winter sea ice encroaches.

December: Internal emails between Interior Department officials reveal the September test of Shell’s oil spill containment system was not just a failure but a complete disaster. The containment dome “breached like a whale” and was “crushed like a beer can” – and all in the comparatively temperate waters of Puget Sound.

December: Shell’s second drilling rig, Kulluk, slips its cables while being towed out of Alaska waters on an accelerated schedule in order to dodge paying Alaska taxes in 2013. The rig, along with its 150,000 gallons of fuel and drilling fluid, washes up on an uninhabited island along one of Alaska’s most pristine coastlines.

EDIT

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/01/06/timeline-shell-s-arctic-drilling-debacle-2012