Story first appeared on Medina Gazette -
Business leaders spoke out against a proposed anti-fracking resolution at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
Michael Baach, president and CEO of Philpott Rubber, urged Council to reconsider the resolution, which would put the city on record opposing state laws regulating hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” throughout Ohio.
The resolution cites concerns over chemicals used in the fracturing process and the infringement of the city’s home rule authority by the state.
Baach said his company is concerned about the resolution because one of Philpott’s subsidiaries is Petco, which creates one of the chemical solutions used in the wells.
Baach said he feared the resolution might deter companies that supply hydraulic fracturing products from moving or keeping their operations in Brunswick.
“We’re here, we’re loyal and we’re a part of the community,” Baach told the Council. “The publicity (passage of the resolution would bring) would put a huge burden on us.”
Baach said Philpott will be celebrating 125 years in business this year. Petco, which was started in 2012, now comprises 25 percent of his total business.
He said the products he manufactures are safe, and he thinks Brunswick’s industrial parks could be a key location for other businesses related to hydraulic fracturing.
Baach said the resolution would send the wrong message.
“Anti-anything can be received as anti-everything if you’re not careful,” he said.
While the geology of rock formations doesn’t favor drilling in Medina County, Baach said Brunswick is an ideal location for suppliers of companies drilling in eastern Ohio, such as Carroll County.
Drilling work in eastern Ohio has driven demand for every service up in areas closest to the wells, he said.
Hotel costs have skyrocketed along with local property values.
But Brunswick is close enough to support drilling work.
“I’d be putting up billboards advertising our location,” Baach said.
Ken Schlick of the Brunswick Chamber of Commerce, joined Baach in opposing the resolution, saying it might damage Brunswick’s image as a friendly place for business.
Mike Chadsey, of Energy In Depth Ohio Campaign, said he represents oil and gas companies throughout Ohio and offered Council members the opportunity to visit well sites and ask questions.
One resident addressed Council in support of the resolution.
Richard Prospal said he had serious concerns about the safety of the water supply and said the industry’s term “brine water” used to describe the solution injected into hydraulic fracturing wells was deceiving and could include other chemicals not disclosed by well operators.
“I think preservation of our water supply is tantamount,” Prospal said. “I support the resolution on the books.”
Council took no action on the resolution, saying more time was needed before making a decision.
The ordinance initially was proposed by Councilwoman Pat Hanek, at large.
She was joined by several other Council members who said they would support the ordinance.
In other action Monday, members approved amending a contract between Zaremba and Associates and the city until May 26 to provide more time to negotiate how to transfer Zaremba’s 67 lots in Brunswick Lakes to Drees homes.
City Law Director Ken Fisher said the timeline for repaying the debt to the city would stay the same.
Zaremba owes $394,090 that was supposed to be repaid to the city when he developed the lots.
Council’s Committee-of-the-Whole also agreed to put a request from Giant Eagle for a 922-square-foot extension of its cafe restaurant on Council’s agenda.
The proposal was given a first reading. A final vote was expected after the extension goes before the city Planning Commission.
Showing posts with label Drilling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drilling. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Arctic Drilling to Be Reviewed in Light of Accidents
originally appeared in The New York Times:
The Interior Department on Tuesday opened an urgent review of Arctic offshore drilling operations after a series of blunders and accidents involving Shell Oil’s drill ships and support equipment, culminating in the grounding of one of its drilling vessels last week off the coast of Alaska.
Officials said the new assessment by federal regulators could halt or scale back Shell’s program to open Alaska’s Arctic waters to oil exploration, a $4.5 billion effort that has been plagued by equipment failures, legal delays, mismanagement and bad weather.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that the expedited review, which is to be completed within 60 days, was prompted by accidents and equipment problems aboard Shell’s two Arctic drilling rigs, the Kulluk and the Noble Discoverer, as well as the Arctic Challenger, a vessel designed to respond to a potential well blowout and oil spill.
In addition, the Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it would conduct a comprehensive marine casualty investigation of the grounding of the Kulluk on Dec. 31.
Shell’s repeated and early misadventures have confirmed the fears of Arctic drilling critics, who said that the company and its federal partners had not shown that they had the equipment, skill or experience to cope with the unforgiving environment there.
The director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, will lead the review. As part of our department’s oversight responsibilities, he said in a statement, our review will look at Shell’s management and operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. We will assess Shell’s performance in the Arctic’s challenging environment.
The assessment will look at Shell’s safety management systems, its oversight of contracted services and its ability to meet federal standards for Arctic oil and gas operations.
According to the president of Shell Oil, said of the government assessment: It’s not a concern to me. I welcome this kind of high-level review. It’s important that both we and the Department of Interior take a look at the 2012 season.
Shell's president added: There are obviously some issues that need to be worked on, particularly the marine transport. He said that it was too early to say what damage may have occurred to the Kulluk but that he had great confidence in this program.
Shell’s rigs drilled two shallow wells last summer, but were halted by government officials before they reached oil-bearing formations. Officials would not allow Shell to drill deeper because the company did not have the required capacity to contain spills after the testing failure of a device designed to cap a runaway well and collect the oil.
In the past several months, the Coast Guard has examined the containment barge and the rebuilt dome, and both passed necessary tests. But the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still needs to inspect the equipment before it can be deployed. Those inspections were originally to be done later this month, but have been put off because of the Kulluk accident.
Environmental advocates have been leery of the Arctic drilling program for years and became especially vocal after the Kulluk ran aground.
Greenpeace, which is circulating petitions calling on President Obama to halt the Arctic drilling program, said that the Interior Department’s reassessment was long overdue.
We’ve repeatedly been told Shell is the best in the business, and so we can only conclude after this series of mishaps that the best in the business is simply not good enough for the Arctic, according to Greenpeace's deputy campaigns director. We only hope that 60 days is long enough to properly examine the extraordinary number of dangerous incidents that have beset Shell’s accident-prone drilling program and put Alaska’s environment at risk.
The senior Pacific counsel for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that government regulators were too lax in allowing the program to go forward without adequate assurances that Shell could operate safely and competently.
We hope this review amounts to more than a paper exercise, he said. The Department of the Interior, after all, is complicit in Shell’s failures because it granted the approvals that allowed Shell to operate.
The Kulluk was towed to a safe harbor on Monday, where it will undergo extensive inspections before continuing its journey to its winter home in Seattle.
If the Kulluk, which Shell has upgraded in recent years at a cost of nearly $300 million, is found to have been wrecked or substantially damaged, it will be hard for the company to find a replacement and receive the numerous government permits needed to resume drilling in July, as it has planned.
Under Department of Interior rules governing Arctic drilling, the company must have two rigs on site at all times to provide for a backup vessel to drill a relief well in case of a blowout, an uncontrolled escape of oil or gas.
The Kulluk, which does not have a propulsion system of its own, ran into trouble in late December when its tow ship, the Aiviq, lost engine power and the towline separated in high winds and heavy seas.
Shell’s other Arctic drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, has also had problems. In July, before sailing to the 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.
At the end of December, the Noble Corporation, 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.
The Interior Department on Tuesday opened an urgent review of Arctic offshore drilling operations after a series of blunders and accidents involving Shell Oil’s drill ships and support equipment, culminating in the grounding of one of its drilling vessels last week off the coast of Alaska.
Officials said the new assessment by federal regulators could halt or scale back Shell’s program to open Alaska’s Arctic waters to oil exploration, a $4.5 billion effort that has been plagued by equipment failures, legal delays, mismanagement and bad weather.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that the expedited review, which is to be completed within 60 days, was prompted by accidents and equipment problems aboard Shell’s two Arctic drilling rigs, the Kulluk and the Noble Discoverer, as well as the Arctic Challenger, a vessel designed to respond to a potential well blowout and oil spill.
In addition, the Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it would conduct a comprehensive marine casualty investigation of the grounding of the Kulluk on Dec. 31.
Shell’s repeated and early misadventures have confirmed the fears of Arctic drilling critics, who said that the company and its federal partners had not shown that they had the equipment, skill or experience to cope with the unforgiving environment there.
The director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, will lead the review. As part of our department’s oversight responsibilities, he said in a statement, our review will look at Shell’s management and operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. We will assess Shell’s performance in the Arctic’s challenging environment.
The assessment will look at Shell’s safety management systems, its oversight of contracted services and its ability to meet federal standards for Arctic oil and gas operations.
According to the president of Shell Oil, said of the government assessment: It’s not a concern to me. I welcome this kind of high-level review. It’s important that both we and the Department of Interior take a look at the 2012 season.
Shell's president added: There are obviously some issues that need to be worked on, particularly the marine transport. He said that it was too early to say what damage may have occurred to the Kulluk but that he had great confidence in this program.
Shell’s rigs drilled two shallow wells last summer, but were halted by government officials before they reached oil-bearing formations. Officials would not allow Shell to drill deeper because the company did not have the required capacity to contain spills after the testing failure of a device designed to cap a runaway well and collect the oil.
In the past several months, the Coast Guard has examined the containment barge and the rebuilt dome, and both passed necessary tests. But the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still needs to inspect the equipment before it can be deployed. Those inspections were originally to be done later this month, but have been put off because of the Kulluk accident.
Environmental advocates have been leery of the Arctic drilling program for years and became especially vocal after the Kulluk ran aground.
Greenpeace, which is circulating petitions calling on President Obama to halt the Arctic drilling program, said that the Interior Department’s reassessment was long overdue.
We’ve repeatedly been told Shell is the best in the business, and so we can only conclude after this series of mishaps that the best in the business is simply not good enough for the Arctic, according to Greenpeace's deputy campaigns director. We only hope that 60 days is long enough to properly examine the extraordinary number of dangerous incidents that have beset Shell’s accident-prone drilling program and put Alaska’s environment at risk.
The senior Pacific counsel for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that government regulators were too lax in allowing the program to go forward without adequate assurances that Shell could operate safely and competently.
We hope this review amounts to more than a paper exercise, he said. The Department of the Interior, after all, is complicit in Shell’s failures because it granted the approvals that allowed Shell to operate.
The Kulluk was towed to a safe harbor on Monday, where it will undergo extensive inspections before continuing its journey to its winter home in Seattle.
If the Kulluk, which Shell has upgraded in recent years at a cost of nearly $300 million, is found to have been wrecked or substantially damaged, it will be hard for the company to find a replacement and receive the numerous government permits needed to resume drilling in July, as it has planned.
Under Department of Interior rules governing Arctic drilling, the company must have two rigs on site at all times to provide for a backup vessel to drill a relief well in case of a blowout, an uncontrolled escape of oil or gas.
The Kulluk, which does not have a propulsion system of its own, ran into trouble in late December when its tow ship, the Aiviq, lost engine power and the towline separated in high winds and heavy seas.
Shell’s other Arctic drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, has also had problems. In July, before sailing to the 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.
At the end of December, the Noble Corporation, 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.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Breakaway Oil Rig Runs Aground in Gulf of Alaska
originally appeared in The New York Times:
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.
The rig, the Kulluk, broke free from a tow ship in stormy seas and ran aground Monday night. The Coast Guard was leading an effort to keep its more than 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel and lubricants from spilling onto the rocky shoreline.
At a news conference in Anchorage on Tuesday afternoon, the federal on-scene coordinator, said that a reconnaissance flight showed the Kulluk was upright and stable, with no significant motion.
The results are showing us that the Kulluk is sound, he said. No sign of breach of hull, no sign of release of any product. He said the response team hoped to get salvage experts aboard the ship to get a better picture of damage.
A representative of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said that, so far, there was no sign of harm to the environment or wildlife.
The Kulluk’s 18 crew members had been evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on Saturday after the rig first went adrift in high winds and rough seas.
The grounding was the latest in a series of mishaps to befall Shell’s ambitious plans to prospect for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the North Slope of Alaska.
Shell halted drilling for oil in September after equipment failures, unexpected ice floes, operational missteps and regulatory delays forced the company to scale back its plans.
Its drilling rigs completed two shallow pilot holes and left the Arctic in late fall to return to Seattle for maintenance work but have encountered problems in transit.
If the Kulluk, which Shell upgraded in recent years at a cost of nearly $300 million, is wrecked or substantially damaged, it will be hard for the company to find a replacement and receive the numerous government permits needed to resume drilling in July, as planned.
Under Department of Interior rules governing Arctic drilling, the company must have two rigs on site at all times to provide for a backup vessel to drill a relief well in case of a blowout, an uncontrolled escape of oil or gas.
A separate containment system designed to collect oil in the case of a well accident failed during testing, preventing Shell from drilling into oil-bearing formations during its abbreviated exploration season last summer and fall. Shell’s Alaska vice president said he could not discuss the latest accident, saying that company officials were working with a Coast Guard-directed unified command and could not comment separately.
An official involved in the response operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said: We don’t know about the damage. It’s too dark. The weather is horrendous. The official said that when a helicopter flew over the rig Monday night: It looked upright about 1,600 feet off the beach. There was no sign of any spill. The official said the fuel tanks on the vessel were well protected inside the hull, making a spill unlikely.
The Kulluk, which does not have a propulsion system of its own, ran into trouble late last week when its tow ship, the Aiviq, lost engine power and the towline separated. A Coast Guard cutter and other ships arrived, and crews struggled through Monday, in seas up to 35 feet, to reconnect tow lines to the rig, succeeding several times. But each time the lines separated.
On Monday night, the Kulluk, 266 feet in diameter, broke free from one tow ship and the Coast Guard ordered a second ship to disconnect, fearing for the safety of its crew.
The Kulluk is sitting on the southeast coast of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island 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. The strait is home to a threatened species of sea lion.
A spokesman for the Interior Department’s offshore drilling safety office would not say whether the latest problem would cause a re-evaluation of the agency’s approval of Shell’s overall Arctic program. But the spokesman 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 to the 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, the Noble Corporation, the Swiss company that owns the 512-foot-long drillship 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.
Critics said that the accident confirmed their worst fears about Shell’s Arctic project and should force federal regulators to stop it.
We’re learning that oceans, while beautiful, are dangerous and unforgiving, according to a 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.
Shell was on the verge of drilling in 2011, but delays in getting final approval for an air quality permit forced the company to put off drilling until 2012. More equipment failures and unpredictable weather continued through the year. In September, Shell had to abandon preliminary drilling in the Chukchi Sea when sea ice moved toward the drilling area only a day after work began.
And finally, the company was forced to put off completing the two wells it had begun to drill for another year when a barge containing a spill containment dome was badly damaged during a testing accident. During the testing, a mechanical device malfunctioned as the containment dome was lowered into the water, and a submarine robot became tangled in some of the dome’s anchor lines.
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.
The rig, the Kulluk, broke free from a tow ship in stormy seas and ran aground Monday night. The Coast Guard was leading an effort to keep its more than 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel and lubricants from spilling onto the rocky shoreline.
At a news conference in Anchorage on Tuesday afternoon, the federal on-scene coordinator, said that a reconnaissance flight showed the Kulluk was upright and stable, with no significant motion.
The results are showing us that the Kulluk is sound, he said. No sign of breach of hull, no sign of release of any product. He said the response team hoped to get salvage experts aboard the ship to get a better picture of damage.
A representative of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said that, so far, there was no sign of harm to the environment or wildlife.
The Kulluk’s 18 crew members had been evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on Saturday after the rig first went adrift in high winds and rough seas.
The grounding was the latest in a series of mishaps to befall Shell’s ambitious plans to prospect for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the North Slope of Alaska.
Shell halted drilling for oil in September after equipment failures, unexpected ice floes, operational missteps and regulatory delays forced the company to scale back its plans.
Its drilling rigs completed two shallow pilot holes and left the Arctic in late fall to return to Seattle for maintenance work but have encountered problems in transit.
If the Kulluk, which Shell upgraded in recent years at a cost of nearly $300 million, is wrecked or substantially damaged, it will be hard for the company to find a replacement and receive the numerous government permits needed to resume drilling in July, as planned.
Under Department of Interior rules governing Arctic drilling, the company must have two rigs on site at all times to provide for a backup vessel to drill a relief well in case of a blowout, an uncontrolled escape of oil or gas.
A separate containment system designed to collect oil in the case of a well accident failed during testing, preventing Shell from drilling into oil-bearing formations during its abbreviated exploration season last summer and fall. Shell’s Alaska vice president said he could not discuss the latest accident, saying that company officials were working with a Coast Guard-directed unified command and could not comment separately.
An official involved in the response operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said: We don’t know about the damage. It’s too dark. The weather is horrendous. The official said that when a helicopter flew over the rig Monday night: It looked upright about 1,600 feet off the beach. There was no sign of any spill. The official said the fuel tanks on the vessel were well protected inside the hull, making a spill unlikely.
The Kulluk, which does not have a propulsion system of its own, ran into trouble late last week when its tow ship, the Aiviq, lost engine power and the towline separated. A Coast Guard cutter and other ships arrived, and crews struggled through Monday, in seas up to 35 feet, to reconnect tow lines to the rig, succeeding several times. But each time the lines separated.
On Monday night, the Kulluk, 266 feet in diameter, broke free from one tow ship and the Coast Guard ordered a second ship to disconnect, fearing for the safety of its crew.
The Kulluk is sitting on the southeast coast of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island 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. The strait is home to a threatened species of sea lion.
A spokesman for the Interior Department’s offshore drilling safety office would not say whether the latest problem would cause a re-evaluation of the agency’s approval of Shell’s overall Arctic program. But the spokesman 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 to the 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, the Noble Corporation, the Swiss company that owns the 512-foot-long drillship 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.
Critics said that the accident confirmed their worst fears about Shell’s Arctic project and should force federal regulators to stop it.
We’re learning that oceans, while beautiful, are dangerous and unforgiving, according to a 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.
Shell was on the verge of drilling in 2011, but delays in getting final approval for an air quality permit forced the company to put off drilling until 2012. More equipment failures and unpredictable weather continued through the year. In September, Shell had to abandon preliminary drilling in the Chukchi Sea when sea ice moved toward the drilling area only a day after work began.
And finally, the company was forced to put off completing the two wells it had begun to drill for another year when a barge containing a spill containment dome was badly damaged during a testing accident. During the testing, a mechanical device malfunctioned as the containment dome was lowered into the water, and a submarine robot became tangled in some of the dome’s anchor lines.
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