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Page added on August 17, 2015
Feds allow Shell to drill for oil in Arctic Ocean
The federal government on Monday gave Royal Dutch Shell the final permit it needs to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s northwest coast for the first time in more than two decades.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement announced that it approved the permit to drill below the ocean floor after the oil giant brought in a required piece of equipment to stop a possible well blowout.
The agency previously allowed Shell to begin drilling only the top sections of two wells in the Chukchi Sea because the key equipment, called a capping stack, was stuck on a vessel that needed repair in Portland, Oregon.
Because the vessel arrived last week, Shell is free to drill into oil-bearing rock, estimated at 8,000 feet below the ocean floor, for the first time since its last exploratory well was drilled in 1991.
“Activities conducted offshore Alaska are being held to the highest safety, environmental protection, and emergency response standards,” agency Director Brian Salerno said in a statement Monday. “We will continue to monitor their work around the clock to ensure the utmost safety and environmental stewardship.”
The Polar Pioneer, a semi-submersible drilling unit that Shell leases from Transocean Ltd., began work July 30 at Shell’s Burger J site. It completed what’s called a mud-line cellar, a 20-by-40-foot hole at the top of the well that will hold a blowout preventer, and continued drilling into rock above the petroleum-bearing zone.
“It’s possible we will complete a well this summer but we’re not attaching a timeline to the number of feet drilled,” Smith said.
Safe operations will determine progress, he said.
Environmental groups oppose Arctic offshore drilling, saying industrial activity will harm polar bears, Pacific walrus, ice seals and threatened whales already vulnerable from climate warming and shrinking summer sea ice. They say oil companies have not demonstrated that they can clean up a spill in water choked by ice.
Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement that President Obama’s decision to grant Shell the final drilling permits goes against science, the will of the people and common sense.
“Granting Shell the permit to drill in the Arctic was the wrong decision, and this fight is far from over,” he said. “The people will continue to call on President Obama to protect the Arctic and our environment.”
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that U.S. Arctic waters hold 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and Shell is eager to explore in a basin that company officials say could be a game-changer for domestic production.
Shell bid $2.1 billion on Chukchi Sea leases in 2008 and has spent upward of $7 billion on exploration there and in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast.
Shell hopes to drill two exploration wells during the short 2015 open-water season. It has until late September, when all work must stop. It has two drill vessels and about 28 support vessels in the Chukchi Sea.
The permit to drill deep into the ocean hinged on the arrival of a capping stack, which is a roughly 30-foot device that can be lowered over a wellhead to act like a spigot to stop a blowout. The government requires Shell to have the device ready to use within 24 hours of a blowout.
The capping stack sits on a 380-foot icebreaker that suffered hull damage July 3 as it left Dutch Harbor, a port in the Aleutian Islands. The vessel named the Fennica was repaired in Portland, Oregon, and briefly delayed from leaving July 30 by Greenpeace protesters in climbing gear hanging from a bridge over the Willamette River.
13 Comments on "Feds allow Shell to drill for oil in Arctic Ocean"
Makati1 on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 10:33 pm
Desperation/insanity.
steve on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 11:41 pm
I am starting to think that P.o is not our greatest threat…it is climate change…http://www.prienga.com/blog/
The artic has a lot of oil and our biggest threat will be climate change.
Dredd on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 6:31 am
As the Greenland ice sheet melts the ocean depth in the Arctic, counter-intuitively, will fall.
Tho currents, methane plumes, and ice flow could become “uncharted” (The SLC Software Model Beta).
It is fooling professionals who don’t do their homework (Peak Sea Level – 2).
penury on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 10:40 am
The large naked apes will continue to go anywhere and despoil whatever is there to prolong the supply of possibly the most needed resource after food. We can argue about coulda shouda wooda but in the end we all (or at least a sizable majority) in the developed nations live in mortal fear of losing our BAU and increasing reliance upon AI and robotics to continue making humans irrelevant.
BobInget on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 11:18 am
Two things came to mind when I heard the Obama Administration gave Shell the final ‘go-ahead’ for Arctic drilling.
1) Shell is not just ‘doubling down on four billion already invested, they are most certainly placing this 127 year old company at risk.
http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/who-we-are/our-history/the-beginnings.html
2) Losing Shell is a minor thing. Losing the Arctic quite another. In the opinions of many climate and ocean scientists a major Arctic oil spill endangers life itself.
The Obama people know this.
We need to ask ourselves, ‘How desperate for
oil we must be that we place our lives in such danger?”
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2015/08/18/119467/arctic-warming-and-what-it-means-for-the-region-and-the-planet/
This, delivered to my server an hour ago.
one sentence caught my attention:
“The U.S. Department of the Interior recently estimated a 75 percent chance of a major oil spill from drilling activities in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska”.
It’s not like there aren’t viable alternatives, there are. Canada has the world third largest oil reserves. We could buy every publicly owned
oil and gas outfit in Canada for pennies on the dollar value given this latest artificial oil debacle.
(most are near or at all time lows)
(alternative energies for another time, here)
Let’s say Shell is able to deliver crude with no major ‘spills’. Nurds at Shell are no dummies.
Still, by the time the first barrel hits Europe
Shell will be, at minimum, minus eight billion
invested. Shell will need, in 2017 dollars, more then $50 crude that’s predicted.
The White House knows, Shell knows, god knows, we know, there’s not a single supertanker of ‘reserve capacity’ remaining on the planet. Venezuela with the world’s biggest
authentic, undisputed, oil reserves won’t be ready for the kind of volumes KSA is putting
forth for at least another decade, if ever. In the mean time China’s needs, indeed requirements,
take it all.
The White House, indeed Shell Oil know why Saudi Arabia blew off OPEC.
Not so suddenly, it all boils down to politics, religion and oil.
Only a single factor favors drilling in the Arctic.
Can you guess?
It’s remoteness. Greenpeace protesters don’t
carry weapons. Jihadists, like bank robbers know where ‘the money is’.
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 12:51 pm
Bob, would anything be all that much different if there was no religion? Does religion make apes crave the power that controlling resources brings? How do you explain atheist communism’s identical brutal behaviour relating to resource control? Alpha male lions are highly territorial and they will kill or drive off other males then kill their children and take the females and control of the territory and resources – what religion do they practice? It’s just an evolutionary blueprint and no one is in control. Religion is just a by product of a too big and complex brain of pattern seeking apes with schizophrenic tendencies. Organized religion is just a way for male apes (mostly) who do not posses the physical attributes to physically dominate others to become alpha males of a different/abstract sort and enhance their reproductive chances. It’s a clever strategy to co-op a few ape behavioural trait in others to your advantage. Apes are not the only clever creatures that get others to do the heavy lifting – check out cuckoo birds for example. Other than that Bob – most of your shit is pretty tight.
Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s lecture about Biological Underpinnings of Religiosity
Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 12:58 pm
Why We Believe in Gods – Andy Thomson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 2:10 pm
Bye bye cancer monkeys………
Playing Chicken With Hothouse Extinction — Obama’s Shameful Shell Drilling Approval
http://robertscribbler.com/2015/08/18/playing-chicken-with-hothouse-extinction-obamas-shameful-shell-drilling-approval/#comments
BobInget on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 3:16 pm
You need to know what Obama knows.
At the very least, understand geopolitical connections between peak oil, Islamic State and Saudi goals, climate changes.
1)Obama knows Iran one way or the other, will have hegemony in the middle east.
2) Israel and Saudi Arabia are, at the very least, making serious plans to bomb Iran.
Repercussions from that venture will reverberate for decades.
3) Note all the smug so called ‘experts ‘ writing
‘I told ya so’ articles about how ‘peak oil’ is a dead letter’. We should throw out all the baby’s
because Saudi Arabia makes irrational, moves based on seventh century bias?
4) The US invaded Iraq and killed off Iran’s
major enemy in the region. Now, to make peace
the US needs to re-up with Iran.
5) The worst may happen. We don’t reconnect with Iran, Saudis and Israel continue to be irrational, Alaska poops out, Venezuelan exports go China way, Mexico continues down the porcelain parkway, (more Mexicans in the last few years have been killed in drug wars then in Iraq) Libyan, Syrian, Sudanese, production dribbles away. Egyptians, Iraqis,
Pakistanis revolt over power and food shortages.
6) Obama Administration sees permitting Shell who, after all, is using their own money to make that last ditch effort to find, then deliver Arctic oil. Obama can’t even explain why they made this terrible decision. Lower oil prices are in fact fueling, at least a temporary recovery. If the President were to admit Peal Oil is not dead,
what happens to world economies?
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 4:00 pm
Bob, that should read 13th century biases, since they were, by and large, very successful and great up to that time and without them you do not get “The Renaissance” and so on. A move to religious fundamentalism and rejection of any rational thinking did them in. Sound like any current civilization you know?
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 4:09 pm
I don’t know everything Obama knows, but I know that some people in this world can get him on the phone right quick………………………………………………………………..
Royal Dutch Shell
Child Organizations: Shell Exploration & Production Shell Oil
LOBBYING $211,906,678 SPENT
http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/royal-dutch-shell/72bef181f3fd4ef69f4eb2f9ec5b8566
BobInget on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 5:53 pm
Good catch Apeaman.
I was thinking of how long Islamic division
has endured. Never realized how many schools of Islam existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches
apneaman on Tue, 18th Aug 2015 6:21 pm
Bob, we were not allowed to be taught that other cultures were just as complex as ours and had nuances and accomplishments and good and bad. Maybe at the college level if you go into the humanities or read the stuff on your own. Even in our own countries there has been major efforts (successful) to write out the parts of the history that are inconvenient to today’s PTB propaganda. Like that many of our grandparents and/or great grandparents were part of labour movements and some of them even bleed for it. Today were nothing but a bunch of propagandized cowards that stand for nothing.