Oil Rig Off Alaska Coast Poses Environmental Danger
Thursday, January 3rd, 2013January 3, 2013
The Federal Aviation Administration instituted a temporary flight restriction yesterday around a Royal Dutch Shell oil drilling rig, the Kulluk, that ran aground on December 31 on an island south of Kodiak, Alaska. The U.S. Coast Guard is maintaining a safety zone of 1 nautical mile (1.85 kilometers) around the structure as well.
The 266-foot (81-meter) mobile offshore rig, which is not self-propelled, broke free of towlines on December 26 while being towed to Seattle for maintenance after seasonal drilling off the coast of Arctic Alaska. All 17 workers aboard the vessel were evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on December 29. After days of efforts trying to guide the Kulluk through 40-foot (12-meter) swells in the Gulf of Alaska, the crew aboard the towing vessel was forced to disconnect the rig.
The beached Kulluk contains up to 150,000 gallons (567,800 liters) of low-sulfur diesel fuel and about 12,000 gallons (45,425 liters) of combined lubricant oil and hydraulic fluid, which Coast Guard officials are concerned may begin to discharge into the sea. Following a Coast Guard reconnaissance flight on January 1, Shell Alaska Operations Manager Sean Churchfield reported, “the Kulluk is upright and rocking with a slow, but stable motion.”
Environmental groups that have opposed the opening of U.S. Arctic waters to offshore oil drilling are citing the Kulluk as an example of what can go wrong when drilling is done in the harsh weather conditions of Arctic Alaska. In a statement to the media, Lois N. Epstein, Arctic program director for the Wilderness Society stated, “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.”
In a January 1 press release, Shell officials noted, “We have already begun a review–working with our marine experts, partners and suppliers–of how this sequence of events . . . led to this incident. We intend to use lessons from that review to strengthen our maritime fleet operations, globally.”
Additional World Book articles:
- Environmental pollution
- Exxon Valdez oil spill
- Gulf oil spill of 2010
- Oil spill
- The Ocean’s Troubled Waters (a special report)