ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Crews aboard two aircraft flew over an oil-drilling ship Tuesday that went aground in a severe Alaska storm and saw no sign that the vessel was leaking fuel or that its hull had been breached.
The Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig used this summer in the Arctic was aground off a small island near Kodiak Island, where the ship, the Kulluk, appeared stable, said federal onscene response coordinator Capt. Paul Mehler.
“There is no sign of a release of any product,” Mehler said during a news conference at a unified command center at an Anchorage hotel.
When the storm eases and weather permits, the plan is to get marine experts onboard the Kulluk to take photos and videos, and then come up with a more complete salvage plan.
The rig ran aground Monday on a sand and gravel shore off an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska.
Mehler said the Kulluk is carrying about 143,000 gallons of diesel and about 12,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid.
A Coast Guard C-130 plane and a helicopter were used to fly Tuesday morning over the grounded vessel. The severeweather did not permit putting the marine experts on board the drilling rig, which is near shore and being pounded by stormy seas.
Mehler said there was a team of about 500 people working on a response to the situation “with many more coming.”
The goal remains to get salvagers aboard the Kulluk and the ship refloated, he said.
A Shell official said the drilling rig was built with a doublesided hull of reinforced steel that is 3 inches thick. It recently had undergone $292 million in improvements before being put into service for a short time in the summer in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast.
Stormy weather eased Tuesday with waves 25 to 30 feet and winds reduced to about 35 mph. Winds were 70 mph and waves had reached 50 feet overnight, the National Weather Service said.
The drilling rig’s difficulties go back to Thursday when it separated from a towing vessel south of Kodiak Island as it was being towed to Seattle for maintenance. The rig grounded Monday night on a sand and gravel shore off the southeast side of Sitkalidak Island.
Sean Churchfield, operations manager for Shell Alaska, said once the situation is under control, an investigation willbe conducted into the cause. He did not know whether the findings would be made public. The Coast Guard said it also would be investigating and its findings would be public.
The Kulluk was being towed Monday by a 360-foot anchor handler, the Aiviq, and a tugboat, the Alert. The vessels were moving north along Kodiak Island, trying to escape the worst of the storm. About 4:15 p.m., the drill ship separated from the Aiviq about 10 to 15 miles offshore. The tugboat crew guided the drill ship to a place where it would cause the least environmental damage and cut it loose. It grounded about 9 p.m.
A spokesman for the Interior Department’s offshore drilling safety office would not say whether the latest problem would cause a re-evaluation of Shell’s overall Arctic program. But the spokesman, Nicholas Pardi of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said that any equipment Shell proposes to use off the Alaskan coast must meet federal safety and testing standards. He added that regulations require a federal inspector be present around the clock during drilling operations.
The other ship Shell has used in the Arctic, the Noble Discoverer, has had problems of its own. In July, before sailing tothe Arctic, it nearly ran aground after dragging its anchor in the Aleutian Islands. Then in November it had a small engine fire. Later that month, during an inspection in the Alaskan port of Seward, the Coast Guard found more than a dozen violations involving safety systems and pollution equipment.
Last week, Noble Corp., the Swiss company that owns the 512-foot-long drill ship and is leasing it to Shell for $240,000 a day, said that many of the problems had been repaired and that the ship was preparing to sail to Seattle to fix the remainder of them.
“We’re learning that oceans, while beautiful, are dangerous and unforgiving,” said Michael LeVine, senior Pacific counsel for the environmental group Oceana. “Shell has demonstrated again and again that it’s not prepared to operate in Alaskan waters. Hopefully something good will come out of this latest incident, and the government will take a careful look at whether activities such as this can be conducted safely and if so what changes are needed to make that possible.” Information for this article was contributed by Mary Pemberton, Dan Joling and Donna Blankinship of The Associated Press and by John M. Broder, Henry Fountain and Clifford Krauss of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/02/2013