Tuesday, January 01, 2013

The Kulluk, Shell Oil's antiquated old drilling ship, was ripped from its tow lines by high winds and has become grounded near Kodiak Island. Chances of a diesel fuel leak very high.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

A large drill ship belonging to the oil company Shell has run aground off Alaska after drifting in stormy weather, company and government officials said.

The ship, the Kulluk, broke away from one of its tow lines on Monday afternoon and was driven, within hours, on to rocks just off Kodiak Island, where it grounded at about 9pm Alaska time, officials said. 

The 18-member crew had been evacuated by the coastguard late on Saturday because of risks from the ongoing storm. 

There was no known spill and no reports of damage, but the Kulluk had about 155,000 gallons of fuel on board, said coastguard commander Shane Montoya, the leader of the incident command team. 

With winds reported as reaching 60 miles an hour and Gulf of Alaska seas of up to 12 metres, responders were unable to keep the ship from grounding, he told a news conference late on Monday night in Anchorage. 

"We are now entering into the salvage and possible spill-response phase of this event."

I received a phone call on this from one of my sources a few hours ago, and from what I understand Shell was essentially warned NOT to go through with putting his drill ship out into these waters. they were told the ship was not prepared for the type of seas it would encounter and that it was literally an accident waiting for  place to happen.

Well now it has happened, and my sources tell me that the expectations are very high that there already substantial leaks, though nothing has officially been confirmed as of yet.

Stay tuned, this is still unfolding.

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:20 PM

    Sarah Palin's "DRILL BABY DRILL" quote shows her STUPIDITY even more.

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  2. Here we go again! Oil companies think they are God and they can disregard the experts and just do what they want! Gee, it sounds like they're pulling a Sarah Palin!

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  3. Anonymous5:07 PM

    Speaking of Sarah, where is she? She has been keeping a low profile lately, but did release a New Years face book message refreshing her followers who were starting to question her and wondering if she decided to quit. Before that she hadn't released any messages for at least two weeks. Maybe she's pouting for not getting her Fox contract renewed and knows her 15 minutes are up. I'm sure someone she trusted had to tell her, because she would never figured it out herself otherwise. Trashing the refrigerator again?

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  4. Anonymous5:17 PM

    They think they own the world. How ANY of these people sleep at night is beyond me!

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  5. Balzafiar5:36 PM

    I wish that well was really an alien space ship that had come to take Sarah and her dysfunctional family back to their home planet.

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  6. I wonder who warned them, if it was the Coast Guard this demonstrates who is in charge. Their actions defy logic, they are acting against their own best interests

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  7. Anita Winecooler8:31 PM

    According to Huffpo, they flew a plane over it and saw no signs of leakage. They're going to wait for the weather to calm down to make sure.

    Stop the insanity! ! !

    "Oil companies keep saying they can conquer the Arctic, but the Arctic keeps disagreeing with the oil companies," Markey said. "Drilling expansion could prove disastrous for this sensitive environment."

    link

    http://tinyurl.com/arsogga

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  8. Anonymous5:01 AM

    Watch this TEd talk about minimg the Alberta tar sands. That toxic stuff has to be shipped and when a giant tanker hits the rocks and spills poisonous bitumen all over the shoreline, it will be a disaster like we have never seen before. Why aren't we spending the hundreds of billions of $$$$ to develop clean energy? Oh, that's right. Fossil fuels are VERY profitable. Www.ted.com/talks/garth_lenz_images_of_beauty_and_devastation.html

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