Here is some interesting news about Shell’s 2014 Artic campaign.
no way … they will pay more than double the price of the Discoverer for that Transocean rig???
[QUOTE=Drill Bill;124770]no way … they will pay more than double the price of the Discoverer for that Transocean rig???[/QUOTE]
Double? It’s closer to triple the day rate, and is probably only going to standby as the relief well vessel. The name sounds good, but rumor is she is physically not ready for that environment, no matter how many years working in the North Sea. Sincerely do hope if 2014 happens for those crews it is a success all around.
yeah, triple indeed! (didn’t to the full math when I first read it). It seems the rig has being doing some work up in the Barents Sea before so one would assume she’s ok (the Norwegians are the most strict ones, no?).
But then I guess they will still do a winterization of it before towing it all the way to Alaska. Quite a trip!
Due to the Gulf Stream, there’s no sea ice in the regions where Norway has offshore oil fields, so they only need to worry about icebergs once every thousand years or so. While the Polar Pioneer may be designed for operations in harsh environment (which Norwegians surely have!), that does not necessarily include winter conditions with sea ice and icing, or even cold ambient temperatures. What worries me is that she has no ice class according to Det Norske Veritas, and even with ice strengthening a semi-submersible platform is IMHO not the most ice-resistant structure. But well, they’re only drilling in the Chukchi Sea…
[B]Feds consider whether to allow Shell to resume Arctic oil exploration[/B]
SEAN COCKERHAM - Daily News Washington Bureau
November 27, 2013
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is weighing whether to allow Shell to resume drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska after a series of mishaps halted its controversial oil exploration effort last year.
The decision is among the toughest issues faced by new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who portrays herself as both an advocate for the environment and a supporter of drilling.
Jewell’s predecessor, Ken Salazar, allowed Shell to drill in the Arctic waters north of Alaska last year, only to later say the company “screwed up.” Interior Department spokeswoman Kate Kelly said Wednesday that drilling won’t resume until the agency has confidence that the effort addresses lessons learned.
A dozen environmental groups wrote the Interior Department this week, complaining that Shell’s new exploration plan fails to show how the company would avoid problems it had during last year’s drilling season.
“Nowhere does Shell describe how it intends to address the many problems exposed by its 2012 drilling season,” wrote the environmental groups, including Oceana, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Instead, the company seems simply to pretend the problems never happened.”
Shell put forth the new exploration plan earlier this month. The document says, “Shell’s 2012 exploration drilling operations in the Arctic were conducted safely, and with no serious injuries or environmental impact.”
The company hopes to resume drilling, possibly as soon as the coming year. Shell filed the exploration plan to keep open the chance of 2014 drilling but said the issue of safety will determine when it returns to the Arctic.
“We will continue to take a methodical approach to this exploration phase and will only proceed if the program meets the conditions necessary to proceed safely and responsibly,” Shell said in a written statement.
Shell experienced a series of problems and accidents last year, among them the grounding of a drilling rig, the Kulluk, which was stuck for several days off Kodiak Island. The Coast Guard said it found 16 safety and environmental violations on the other drilling rig used by Shell, the Noble Discoverer, which the company hopes to use again if allowed to resume drilling in Arctic waters.
Regulators also charged that both drilling rigs violated air pollution permit limits. The Environmental Protection Agency imposed more than $1 million in fines in a settlement agreement.
Shell suspended its offshore Arctic efforts this year and said it was taking the time to review lessons learned.
Shell’s new exploration plan is only for the Chukchi Sea off northwest Alaska, while previously the company also targeted the neighboring Beaufort Sea.
The Chukchi Sea contains by far the biggest prize, the Burger Prospect, which the oil company says could turn into a world-class, multibillion-barrel discovery. Shell has spent more than $5 billion so far on its Arctic offshore effort and has yet to extract oil.
Shell’s Alaskan efforts are part of a global race to harvest energy from the world’s Arctic waters. It is a frontier region with potentially large oilfields but also high costs and substantial environmental risks, said a recent report from the International Energy Agency.
The IEA projects that, given the availability of other sources of oil, less than 200,000 barrels a day are going to be produced globally from Arctic waters by 2035.
“Some developments could go faster, in particular those spearheaded by Russia, in partnership with international companies, in the Kara Sea and the Barents Sea, or by Norway in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea,” the IEA concluded in its energy report.
Environmental groups are opposing Arctic offshore oil drilling across the globe. The dozen groups that signed the letter to the Interior Department this week said Shell’s exploration plans for the Chukchi Sea include more pollution of the area than its 2012 effort.
They argued the Interior Department shouldn’t even consider Shell’s exploration plan before the government enacts new Arctic drilling standards and wraps up investigations left over from Shell’s last effort.
Interior Department staffers are going over Shell’s exploration plan to see whether it’s complete enough for a formal review.
“Exploration in the challenging and sensitive environment of the Arctic must be done cautiously and subject to the highest safety and environmental standards,” said Interior Department spokeswoman Kelly.
http://www.adn.com/2013/11/27/3201032/feds-consider-whether-to-allow.html
the next episode … wondering how DoI will deal with it.
Shell outlines 2014 drilling plans
FuelFix- by Jennifer A. Dlouhy - December 4, 2013 at 5:02 pm
WASHINGTON — Shell is working to convince the Obama administration that it has learned from its recent mishaps and is ready to launch a new round of Arctic drilling next year.
In a 64-page “integrated operations plan” filed with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Nov. 26 and released Wednesday, Shell outlines the broad contours of its planned activity in the Chukchi Sea.
The company is seeking to finish drilling one exploratory well and bore four others at its Burger prospect in the Chukchi Sea, using a newly leased drillship, after its Kulluk conical drilling unit ran aground last year.
Shell’s new integrated operations plan comes in response to a March report from the Interior Department that blamed the company for not sufficiently overseeing and managing a web of contractors. The Interior Department also said Shell had prompted “serious questions regarding its ability to operate safely and responsibly in the challenging and unpredictable conditions” offshore in Alaska, after a series of incidents l last year.
The episodes included the brief drifting of its drillship Noble Discoverer near Dutch Harbor, a fire on the vessel, damage to its Arctic containment system during a certification test and the Kulluk grounding.
The Interior Department asked Shell to submit a third-party audit of its management systems and urged the company to provide “a comprehensive and integrated operational plan describing in detail its future drilling program.”
Shell says it recognizes that “planned 2014 operations may encounter many challenges,” including “vast distances, harsh weather and sea conditions, possible volcanic and earthquake activity, and sparse shore-based infrastructure.”
“The Arctic offshore waters of Alaska present considerable challenges in terms of harsh environmental conditions, remoteness, and logistical obstacles,” the company said. “However, Shell has most recently been intensively engaged in Arctic Alaska since 2006, following exploration drilling in the Chukchi Sea in the 1980s and ’90s and builds its 2014 plans on a solid foundation of practical operational experience in the region.”
“Assets have been carefully selected to operate in Alaskan offshore conditions, in addition to employees and contract personnel being trained for these conditions,” Shell added.
It anticipates mobilizing an armada of 29 vessels, including anchor handling vessels, barges and oil spill response equipment. Unlike in 2012, when it largely relied on one helicopter to fly people and equipment to its drilling operations, Shell anticipates it will regularly use two twin-engine S-92 helicopters if the work is approved for next year. A third helicopter would be on standby in Barrow in case it were needed for search-and-rescue operations.
The company said it would continue using an internal weather advisory center, with high-resolution satellite imagery, ocean buoys and modeling, to monitor ice and other conditions surrounding its operations near Alaska.
The company said lessons learned in 2012 spurred planned and ongoing upgrades to the drillship Noble Discoverer, including work aimed at improving reliability and air emissions. While the vessel is in an Asian shipyard, workers are tackling its hull and “major ship systems with a focus on improving safety and environmental performance and operational efficiency,” Shell said.
Shell said it also is improving its Arctic containment system, its contractor management procedures and its logistics management.
“Shell is a learning organization, and its implementation of risk management and continued improvement are central elements of this (plan) for 2014 operations,” the company said.
In September, Shell agreed to pay $1.1 million in fines to settle claims that it violated air pollution permits, largely because of excess nitrogen oxide emissions from the Discoverer.
Shell acknowledged that it will rely heavily on contracted assets during its planned 2014 drilling, but it is assuring the contractors “remain fully read for, and undertake, safe operations.” It is not clear what specific changes Shell has made to its lineup of contractors for 2014.
Regulators at the ocean energy bureau have asked Shell to provide dozens of additional documents and other information in connection with its proposed drilling blueprint for the Chukchi Sea.
The agency wants to know more about Shell’s hope to reduce the frequency of tests on its blowout preventer to once every two weeks (instead of weekly), get more details on the capabilities of Shell’s chosen drillship and learn what is being done to modify vessels for extreme Alaska weather conditions.
Environmentalists have urged the federal government to require oil companies drilling in the Arctic to use purpose-built Polar Class drilling rigs that are designed to prevent ice accumulation and survive encounters with thick ice floes while remaining anchored over a well.
Shell was forced to constrain its 2012 operations to “top-hole” drilling of the initial 1,500 feet of its Arctic wells, after its unique oil spill containment system was damaged during a deployment drill and could not get to the area in time. The company has devoted nearly $5 billion and eight years of work into a new generation of Arctic oil exploration, decades after floating rigs drilled the last offshore wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/12/04/shell-outlines-2014-drilling-plans/
I try to avoid Scribd, so here’s a link to the PDF from an official source:
Editorial: A cold, hard look needed for Shell’s Arctic drilling plans
An agency of the federal Department of the Interior needs more details about Shell’s plans before another try at oil exploration in Alaska.
Seattle TImes Editorial - 17 December 2013
DAYS after Shell Oil turned in revised proposals for oil exploration in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management responded with 10 pages of questions to answer.
Good. Skepticism by this Department of the Interior agency is the least to be expected after Shell’s troubled launch of Alaska oil exploration and drilling plans in 2012 in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
Trouble with oil rigs and a new tug caused Shell to punt on the 2013 season, and now it is back asking to try again in 2014 in the Chukchi Sea, between Siberia and the top of Alaska, west of Barrow.
The bureau wants to know if Shell has addressed and corrected issues of noncompliance cited by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency. The information was missing from a November filing by Shell.
For an industry that failed to manage conditions in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, with BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, there is no margin for error in Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf.
The bureau describes the conditions as extreme cold, freezing spray, snow, extended periods of low light, strong winds, dense fog, sea ice, strong currents and dangerous sea states.
Safety and environmental hazards loom large in such conditions and complicate the ability of others to respond in emergencies.
In a letter Thursday, six U.S. senators asked Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to delay future oil and gas lease sales and permitting in the Arctic Ocean “until a thorough re-evaluation of the environmental and safety risks associated with Arctic drilling activities can be completed.”
Proceeding cautiously, and seeking credible explanations and assurances of remedial changes, must come before any Department of Interior consideration of new drilling plans.
In 2012, no oil had been spilled and no one was injured or any lives lost. Future drilling plans cannot be built on assumptions based on past good fortune.
Thank you to the Seattle TImes
GOOD!
Shell and the Government have had more than enough time to study what is reasonably required for Chukchi Sea drilling. They should both have good people onboard, be well organized, and ready to make quick decisions to agree on n acceptable plan.
Having spent some time in the Chukchi, I don’t see any reason why a well organized effort with good equipment should not be able to drill successfully and safely during the summer season. The only problems are ice, and lack of nearby support bases, but there is not usually much ice in the Chukchi during the summer, and where there is, it is only the remnants of thin first year ice. The Chukchi is not nearly as harsh an environment to work in during the summer season as other places with successful drilling,such as Newfoundland.
I do have some doubts about using old equipment like the NOBLE DISCOVERER, especially when Shell is wasting the use of a better ice class ship, STENA DRILLMAX ICE, drilling in the South American tropics.
Shell should make sure that Chouest and Harvey have all their captains and mates for the Chukchi 2014 OSVs in Finland right now aboard the FENNICA and TOR VIKING learning how to operate in ice.
Shell should leave any towing operations to Alaska veterans, such as Crowley, Foss, or Western Towboat.
I hope Shell has the right people and plan this time. I hope they get prompt approval and go forward this year to safely find a lot of oil in the Chukchi.
At least for now it seems unlikely that Fennica, Nordica and Tor Viking will be used for icebreaking in the Baltic Sea this year. Finland and Sweden will deploy their conventional icebreakers (five and five vessels) first and even some of those might remain on standby through the ice season if the weather does not get cold soon.
Still, sending officers for ice training in the Baltic is a nice idea. Last year, I was talking to a guy from Arctia Shipping about bringing some customers to their icebreakers to show them that they are really better off with azimuth thrusters in their ships instead of conventional shaftlines and rudders…
Tor, Nort & Fen are on Tap - Harvey, Eco, Foss & Crowley are all in Play + a smattering of local Talent.
I should note (as I can not update my profile on my phone) That I Work for Shell in the Alaska Operation - I am not a spokesman. I am a Chief Engineer with a deep well of Exp in offshore oil & Gas As well as OSR, and Tankers. Among many other sectors of the maritime industry.
Last Paragraph
Good fortune ?
I suggest it’s also known as Experience- Something We are building on, constantly looking at the “plan” and looking for any gaps and plugging them
Isn’t one of the biggest problems the Discoverer itself???
[QUOTE=Kingrobby;126786]Isn’t one of the biggest problems the Discoverer itself???[/QUOTE]
I think it’s true the Discoverer was not as Arctic ready as everyone said or hoped. But I hear there have been big improvements while she is in the yard, and they also removed all the senior personnel in the hopes of making 2014 better. Anyone know if this is true? Pictures?
[QUOTE=The Commodore;126892]…and they also removed all the senior personnel in the hopes of making 2014 better…[/QUOTE]
Didn’t Stalin try this in the Soviet Union with known consequences? 
[QUOTE=The Commodore;126892] But I hear there have been big improvements while she is in the yard, and they also removed all the senior personnel in the hopes of making 2014 better. Anyone know if this is true? Pictures?[/QUOTE]
I heard rumors of a heated moon pool, and possibly even radiant heat for the drill floor. I agree with the other comment about getting rid of all the Senior Personnel, isn’t that very Soviet Union-ish??? Wouldn’t it be better to get rid of the bad eggs and keep some of the personnel that have already done the first season onboard the Discoverer??? I know some Kulluk people have been transferred over, but the Kulluk wasn’t a drill ship, so is that gonna be an improvement?
The Shell document posted earlier in this thread did not mention anything about a heated moon pool.