Shell’s Fennica icebreaker has returned to Alaska.
It docked at Dutch Harbor Tuesday evening after enduring repairs and protests in Portland, Oregon.
The Fennica approaches the Delta Western Fuel dock in Alaska’s Dutch Harbor on Tuesday. KUCB/John Ryan photo.
Shell began drilling the top of a well in the Chukchi Sea last
week, but it does not have federal permission from the U.S. Interior
Department to drill into oil-bearing rocks unless the Fennica is on
site.
Shell’s bright yellow well-capping stack sits on the stern of the
Fennica. It’s to be used in case a well blows out and other
splll-prevention methods fail.
“Once the Fennica is in theater [in the vicinity of the Chukchi Sea
drill sites], then we’ll engage in discussions with the regulator about
that permit,” Shell spokeswoman Megan Baldino said.
The drill sites are more than 1,000 miles north of Dutch Harbor, the nearest deepwater port.
The Fennica went to Portland’s Vigor shipyard after tearing a
three-foot gash in its hull on an uncharted rock in Alaska’s Dutch
Harbor on July 3. The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the incident.
Greenpeace activists suspended from a bridge across Portland’s
Willamette River and climate-change activists paddling kayaks in the
river managed to delay the Fennica’s departure from the shipyard by
about 36 hours.
Shell has until the last week of September to finish its drilling for this year.