Breakaway Oil Rig Runs Aground

One of Shell Oil’s two Arctic drilling rigs is beached on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, threatening environmental damage from a fuel spill and calling into question Shell’s plans to resume drilling in the treacherous waters north of Alaska in the summer, reports The New York Times.

The rig, the Kulluk, which was used for test drilling in the Arctic last summer, is carrying about 139,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 12,000 gallons of lubricating oil and hydraulic fluid, the officials said.

The Kulluk, one of two rigs that Shell used to drill test wells off the North Slope of Alaska as part of the company’s ambitious and expensive effort to open Arctic waters to oil production, was being towed by the Aiviq to a Seattle shipyard for off-season maintenance when the towline initially separated during a storm on Thursday.

The 266-foot diameter rig ran aground on the east coast of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island that is separated by the Sitkalidak Strait from the far larger Kodiak Island to the west. The nearest town, Old Harbor, is across the strait on Kodiak Island; it has a population of about 200 people.

A Coast Guard helicopter flew over the rig after the grounding at 8:48 p.m. and “detected no visible sheen,” said Darci Sinclair, a spokeswoman for a unified command of officials from Shell, Alaskan state agencies and other groups that has been directing the response since the troubles with the rig began last Thursday.

Shell has spent six years and more than $4 billion in its effort to drill in Arctic waters, one of the last untapped oil-producing regions in the United States. But the effort has faced regulatory hurdles and opposition from American Indian and environmental groups.

“Oil companies keep saying they can conquer the Arctic, but the Arctic keeps disagreeing with the oil companies,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.

Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society, told Reuters that either the federal government or Shell should shut down the $4.5 billion drilling program “given the unacceptably high risks it poses to both humans and the environment.”

There were no immediate signs of a fuel spill from the rig, but environmentalists have seized on the accident as proof Arctic Ocean oil operations are too risky. More flights during the day on Tuesday were needed to determine if the Kulluk spilled any of its 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel or caused other environmental problems.

Shell hopes to drill five exploratory wells in the Arctic region during the 2013 drilling season, which begins in mid-July.

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