Shell’s Drilling Plans and the Lessons of Experience
Shell Drilling Rig Discoverer (Photo by Royal Dutch Shell)
Royal Dutch Shell continues to inch towards drilling in the Chukchi Sea, possibly as early as Spring 2013. WC believes there will be a disaster, that it will not be contained with any degree of effectiveness, and that the Chukchi Sea and its marine environment will be permanently and seriously damaged. It’s not just WC’s normally pessimistic view of oil field technology in general and Big Oil in particular. It is simply learning the lessons of experience.
ITEM. We have the lesson of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Eleven killed, sixteen injured and 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled. The abject failure of technology, the corner-cutting at the expense of safety, the lies from the industry and the clumsy response are all matters of public record. Shell attempts to distinguish the Deepwater Horison from the Chukchi Drilling efffort: Deepwater involved 5,000 feet of water, while the Chuckchi project is about 150 feet. But the Deepwater involved a shirtsleeve climate, immense resources only 75 miles away and, of course, water that is a liquid year round. The Chukchi project involves severely limited resources at least a thousand miles away, a true arctic environment and ice that’s ten feet thick.
ITEM. Off shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a relatively mature technology; there are literally thousands of wells. The Chukchi project is the first true offshore (as opposed to man-made island-based) drilling in the arctic environment in the United States. It is unprecedented. All technology, by definition, is experimental and unproven.
ITEM. Alaska has the experience of the Exxon Valdez, and the lasting damage to Prince William Sound, the failure of cleanup technologies in a much milder climate and utter failure of Exxon to behave effectively or responsibly. Alaska has the experience of BP plc, which has failed to adequately maintain the feeder lines and other infrastructure on the North Slope. And the lessons of history: when the going gets tough, the big corporations simply leave. Ask McCarthy whether Kennecott was to be trusted.
ITEM. Respol, a pretty respectable mid-major Spanish oil company, had Nabors Drilling working on a new well on the Qugruk #2 pad in the Colville Delta earlier this year. They hit an unexpected pocket of gas. The well, still at a relatively shallow 2,523 feet, blew out, spewing 42,000 gallons of drilling mud, natural gas and whatever else was in the gas pocket all over the Colville Delta. The drill rig had to be shut down to avoid an explosion. The rig, the blown-out mud and everything else, froze in the sub-zero temperatures. Now, in the memorable phrase of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, just re-starting the drilling rig – the first step to controlling the well – “has proven a difficult task.” There is no time frame for getting that situation under control.
Now imagine a gas kickback like the incident at Qugruk #2 Pad 70 miles off shore, perhaps with the added challenge of mixed gas and oil merrily bubbling into the Chukchi Sea while Shell tries to deal with a drilling rig coated in frozen mud and a damaged drill rig, on a platform that’s been evacuated because there’s explosive natural gas around. The Qugruk well blew on February 15; more than a week later, the well is still not under control. How long would control take 70 miles off shore? Oh, and add in a typical bad Chukchi storm for more excitement.
Is there a single, informed person (other than Sean Parnell), not employed by the oil industry, who thinks that kind of disaster can be managed? Who thinks an oil company can be trusted? Trusted with the future of the Chukchi Sea? The subsistence life of the Inupiaq people? Who thinks this kind of disaster can’t happen?
Is there anyone who believes that, in the event of a disaster, Shell will behave more responsibly than Exxon? Than BP?
WC bows to no one in his respect for technology. WC invented the term “technogeekery” to describe himself. But there is no technology to deal with these kinds of problems. It doesn’t exist. Shell has disaster plans, but these are words on paper. Respol had a disaster plan. Reality is something else entirely. It’s the lesson of experience.
