Shell drilling rig has yet another accident
From my email--
If it wasn’t so damn sad it would be hilarious: Royal Dutch Shell (aka the Keystone Cops of the Oil industry) just crashed another one of their Arctic drilling vessels, and they still want to go ahead with drilling. What’s worse? The Department of the Interior just might let them.
First, Shell ran the drill rig Kulluk aground in Alaska in 2012, resulting in 8 felony convictions for recklessness and willful deception of authorities1. Now, they’ve torn a 3 foot gash in their primary icebreaker, Fennica.
On July 3rd, Shell was taking a shortcut2 through shallow, treacherous waters with the Fennica when they struck something hard enough to puncture the hull of their toughest icebreaker.
Shell has now been forced to send the Fennica south to Portland, Oregon for repairs. This is Shell’s only icebreaker equipped with a “cap stack”, the mission critical gear needed to cap a blown-out well.
Shell’s own safety plans – the ones they had to submit to the Department of Interior in order to get permits to drill in the Arctic – rely on having two primary icebreakers in order to avoid accidents that can lead to devastating oil spills.
Without the Fennica, Shell is in violation of its own Oil Response Plan, as well as its Exploration Plan.
Yet the Department of Interior just granted a limited permit allowing Shell to begin the drilling process, while keeping it from actually digging down to the oil itself. This conditional approval is a another step in the wrong direction, but Shell will still need a new permit to drill for oil once it completes the Fennica’s repairs.
