Claiming it had “met its objectives” in responding to the New Year’s Eve grounding of the Shell Oil drilling rig Kulluk near Kodiak Island, the Unified Command formed after the incident announced that it was standing down effective Wednesday afternoon.
The command’s primary elements included the U.S. Coast Guard, Shell, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Kulluk owner Noble Drilling. Numerous other groups and stakeholders were also represented in the organization, which handled the response to the Kulluk’s Dec. 31 grounding in Sitkalidak Island's Ocean Bay.
“Agency representatives will return to their normal roles and responsibilities,” Capt. Paul Mehler III, the Coast Guard’s federal on-scene coordinator, said in the command’s Wednesday statement. “The Coast Guard will continue to monitor the activities involved in prepping the Kulluk for movement and I will lift the Captain of the Port order (restricting the Kulluk’s movements) once all the requirements have been met.”
The grounding saw the deployment of numerous recovery assets to the nearby community of Old Harbor, before the Kulluk was refloated about a week later and towed to Kiliuda Bay off Kodiak Island. Unified Command officials had said watertight doors aboard the Kulluk had breached during the grounding, with water damage to the main and backup generators as well as other parts of the rig's interior, but said much less about the condition of its hull despite underwater assessments by remotely operated vehicles days after its arrival in Kiliuda Bay.
Speculation that the Kulluk had suffered significant damage in the incident was largely confirmed Monday, when Shell announced that the conical drilling unit and its sister vessel, the Noble Discoverer, would be taken to Asia for repairs.
“The completion of the damage assessment revealed that the inner hull of the Kulluk was not breached and that all fuel tanks remain intact,” officials wrote in Wednesday's statement. “The outer hull did receive damage as expected with a vessel being aground during adverse weather.”
The command says the Kulluk has been certified for towing by risk-management firm Det Norske Veritas. A fact sheet included with the release (PDF) says that three tugs, the Corbin Foss, the Lauren Foss and the Ocean Wave, will take the rig on a 10-day trip to Dutch Harbor, where the rig will be placed in a purpose-built conical dock for “dry-tow” transport to Asia.
One vessel previously associated with the Kulluk incident will not be participating in the Dutch Harbor tow: the Aiviq, which lost power near Kodiak on Dec. 28 while towing the rig to Seattle. The power failure prompted the Kulluk's evacuation and a series of efforts over the following weekend to bring it back under tow, which were ultimately unsuccessful.
"The root cause of the Aiviq’s loss of power is currently under investigation, so the vessel is not being used for the tow," officials wrote in the fact sheet.
The command says Shell is still working with the Old Harbor Native Corp. to recover four Kulluk lifeboats that separated from the rig and washed ashore on Sitkalidak Island. The work was expected to take some time, due to what the statement called “the extreme challenges of the terrain.”
“The State determined that the command objectives established on day one have been achieved and therefore that it is appropriate to stand down the Unified Command,” said state on-scene coordinator Steve Russell, with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. “The State will continue to work with Shell, Coast Guard and stakeholders to ensure that the debris on our Kodiak beaches is recovered.”
This is a developing story. Please check KTUU.com and the Channel 2 newscasts for updates.
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