Drilling mud and methane gas shot from the well through a diverter pipe, but none of the 76 workers on the rig were injured, no oil was spilled and the gas didn’t ignite, the officials said.

The well spewed gas for hours Wednesday, but by about 5:45 p.m. the gas had stopped flowing on its own, indicating it was probably from a small pocket, said Dan Seamount, chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The well was still producing water and remained out of control, he said.

A well-control contractor mobilized from a field office in Anchorage and its headquarters in Texas and was expected to be on site by early today, Seamount said.

A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Ty Keltner, said drilling mud landed on the rig and neighboring snow. The DEC initially said the spill contained about 1,200 gallons of drilling mud, but by 7:30 p.m. had increased the estimate to about 42,000 gallons, based on information from Repsol.

Drilling mud is a clay mixture designed to lubricate the hole, carry cut rock to the surface and provide downward pressure to reduce the risk of a blowout.

Officials identified the well as Qugruk 2 or Q2. It was on land on the Colville River delta about 1 3/4 miles from the Arctic coastline and about 55 miles west-northwest of Deadhorse, Seamount said. The nearest village, Nuiqsuit, is about 18 miles away.

The blowout occurred as a group of Repsol-North America officials were visiting the North Slope. The Madrid-based company, a big player in the international oil business, only recently came to Alaska. Its announcement last year that it would begin an aggressive exploration program this winter was cheered by state officials and legislators interested in diversifying Alaska’s North Slope industry and in boosting total production.

But Pamela Miller of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center said it was sobering to note that Repsol had more than 100 offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea, making it second only to Shell. Environmentalists have expressed concern about the effects of a well blowout in the Arctic Ocean, where spilled oil would be difficult to contain.

One of the visiting Repsol officials was Jan Sieving, the company’s North American vice president for public affairs, who was called upon to deal with the crisis from an oil camp with a cell phone that barely worked.

Sieving said the rig contractor was Nabors Alaska Drilling. When the blowout occurred about 9 a.m., the workers were evacuated and the rig shut down, she said.

Seamount, in Juneau for hearings and meetings with legislators, said because the rig was “cold,” there was not likely to be an ignition source that could cause the gas to explode.

Repsol hired Wild Well Control of Houston, with an Anchorage office, to restore control. Seamount said it’s likely they will force heavy “kill-weight mud” back down the well.

Advances in drilling technology and geologic modeling have reduced blowouts, but not eliminated them, as the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico shows.

“Blowouts are exceedingly rare,” Seamount said in an email message. Since 1949, Alaska’s 7,553 wells have generated 19 blowouts. None have resulted in oil spills on tundra or water, he said. Before Wednesday, the last blowout on the North Slope was in 1994 in the Endicott field, he said.

At Q2 Wednesday morning, with the temperature around 14 below and areas of low fog hanging around the rig, workers were pulling the drill out of the well, a routine operation, when “they had a gas kick,” Seamount said. The well was about 2,525 feet deep at that point, on its way to a planned 7,000 feet.

Mud and gas shot out of the well. Drillers responded by pumping more mud down the hole in an attempt to kill it, the DEC said. But the new mud was blown out too.

“The diverter worked the way it’s supposed to,” Seamount said. “All the personnel got out of the way.”

In the early stages of a well like Q2, drillers don’t use the heavy blowout preventers that the world learned about from the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Instead, Seamount said, surface holes rely on diverters to route mud, gas, oil and water safely away from the rig in the event of a blowout. The diverter vent on Q2 was about 75 feet from the rig, Seamount said.

Pressurized gas pockets are common hazards of drilling.

“We are not sure why they lost control but will pursue that as part of our incident investigation,” Seamount said. An inspector from his agency was on the scene Wednesday and the DEC expected to have four representatives there Thursday.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regulates drilling for worker safety, environmental protection and resource conservation.

Even if no oil spilled as a result of the lost well control, “it’s going to be a very expensive incident for Repsol,” Seamount said. Well-control contractors don’t come cheap, he said, and the Nabors rig will be idle for some time.

Repsol has attracted attention in Congress recently because it is drilling several deepwater exploratory wells in Cuban waters not far from U.S. territorial water off Florida.

Reach Richard Mauer at rmauer@adn.com or 257-4345.

Anchorage Daily News reported this story at www.adn.com

The silver lining to Arctic global warming

Russia’s deal with BP offers a model for how to best exploit scarce resources, writes Roger Howard.

Melting Ice in the North West Passage Photo: Getty

The Russians lack the advanced engineering skills, particularly in exploiting deepwater oil and gas reserves, and are heavily dependent on the expertise of Western oil majors, which in turn desperately need to book reserves of future supplies to keep their investors happy.

It is this deal that should serve as a model for future interactions between Russia and foreign governments; not just the six other Arctic powers, such as Canada and the United States, but others, China and the EU member states among them, that lie far distant. For each of these governments has to recognise that it has a vested interest in avoiding confrontation in the Arctic region.

This is based partly on an altruistic and humanitarian concern to prevent accidents that could unleash environmental damage on a massive scale, similar to the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989, when an oil tanker ran aground in ice-laden waters.

But it also represents a strong material self-interest: in the Arctic, as elsewhere, the mere risk of confrontation over precious resources could easily send financial markets into panic, spiking the spot price of commodities in a way that would damage every consumer.

By contrast, the region’s resources can be exploited more successfully, as well as in a more environmentally friendly manner, if countries work together to pool their skills and expertise.

The mere threat of resource shortages should prompt us to exploit the remaining reserves to the full, not to fight over them. Besides commercial cooperation, there are other joint ventures in the Arctic that could tap this self-interest to help foster international harmony. Russia and Nato could work together to confront the mutual challenges in the waters of the Northeast Passage that runs along Russia’s northern coasts.

Since international shipping is just starting to make use of this route, working groups could also be established to tackle any prospective environmental disaster caused by collision, accidents and catastrophe.

In the coming decades, governments must recognise that it is in their interests to work together in the Arctic and to use regional climate change as an opportunity to help build the relationships between them.

Roger Howard is the author of ‘The Arctic Gold Rush: The New Race for Tomorrow’s Natural Resources’ (Continuum 2009)

Some of the world’s biggest oil companies have launched a four-year, multi-million-dollar collaborative effort aimed at enhancing the industry’s ability to respond to and prevent Arctic oil spills as these new frontiers open up to development.

Luke Johnson  26 January 2012 18:43 GMT

January 31, 2012

The rate of Arctic climate change was now faster than ecosystems and traditional Arctic societies could adapt to.

WA-based scientists have warned of “dire consequences” to the human race after detecting the first signs of dangerous climate change in the Arctic.

The scientists, from the University of WA, claim the region is fast approaching a series of imminent “tipping points” which could trigger a domino effect of large-scale climate change across the entire planet.

In a paper published in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal AMBIO and Nature Climate Change, the lead author and director of UWA’s Oceans Institute, Winthrop Professor Carlos Duarte, said the Arctic region contained arguably the greatest concentration of potential tipping elements for global climate change.

Advertisement: Story continues below

“If set in motion, they can generate profound climate change which places the Arctic not at the periphery but at the core of the Earth system,” Professor Duarte said.  ”There is evidence that these forces are starting to be set in motion.”

“This has major consequences for the future of human kind as climate change progresses.”

Professor Duarte said the loss of Arctic summer sea ice forecast over the next four decades − if not before − was expected to have abrupt knock-on effects in northern mid-latitudes, including Beijing, Tokyo, London, Moscow, Berlin and New York.

Research showed that the Arctic was warming at three times the global average and the loss of sea ice – which had melted faster in summer than predicted − was linked tentatively to recent extreme cold winters in Europe.

Professor Duarte − winner of last year’s prestigious Prix d’Excellence awarded by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea − said the most dangerous aspect of Arctic climate change was the risk of passing critical “tipping points”.

In the next 10 years, Professor Duarte warned summer sea ice could be largely confined to north of coastal Greenland and Ellesmere Island, and was likely to disappear entirely by mid-century.

A drop in Arctic ice had opened new shipping routes, expanded oil, gas and mineral exploitation and led to new harbours, houses, roads, airports, power stations and other support facilities.

It had triggered a new gold rush to access these resources, with recent struggles by China, Brazil and India to join the Arctic Council where the split of these resources was being discussed.

But increased deposits of black carbon (soot) from coal-burning power stations had accelerated warming and ice melt.

Professor Duarte said the rate of Arctic climate change was now faster than ecosystems and traditional Arctic societies could adapt to.

The Arctic was expected to stop being a carbon dioxide sink and become a source of greenhouse gases if seawater temperatures rose by 4-5C.

“It represents a test of our capacity as scientists, and as societies to respond to abrupt climate change,” Professor Duarte said.

“We need to stop debating the existence of tipping points in the Arctic and start managing the reality of dangerous climate change.

“We argue that tipping points do not have to be points of no return.

“Several tipping points, such as the loss of summer sea ice, may be reversible in principle − although hard in practice.

“However, should these changes involve extinction of key species − such as polar bears, walruses, ice-dependent seals and more than 1000 species of ice algae − the changes could represent a point of no return.

“Confusion distracts attention from the urgent need to focus on developing early warning indicators of abrupt climate change, address its human causes and rebuild resilience in climate, ecosystems and communities.”

 
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/arctic-climate-change-to-spark-domino-effect-20120130-1qpgv.html#ixzz1lKAY34zk

• Federal government refuses to protect caribou

  Blogpost by Catharine Grant, Forest Campaigner – January 27, 2012 at 10:49 Add comment

  Environment Minister Peter Kent is still refusing to issue an emergency order to protect Alberta’s woodland caribou, despite a court order last July asking him to in light of scientific evidence.

  Kent has suggested that the existing recovery plan in Alberta will address the need of the species in that province. However, the plan has been heavily criticized for relying on shooting wolves, a natural predator of caribou, instead of protecting habitat from damaging industrial practices.

  Kent was ordered in July to issue the emergency, but remained silent until environmental lawyers, representing a group of Alberta First Nations, filed a request with the court last week to force the minister to comply with the judge’s ruling.

  Kent’s rationale for continuing to deny the emergency order is that some herds in Canada are sustainable, so losing herds in Alberta will not pose an immediate risk to the species across Canada. This is despite scientific evidence that more than 50% of woodland caribou herds are not self-sustaining and face risk of imminent extirpation, according to a 2009 Environment Canada report.

  Science shows that habitat destruction is the main driver of caribou decline, not natural predation. Yet Kent prefers to rely on a strategy that kills wolves in the name of caribou protection. Wolves are a natural part of a healthy Boreal ecosystem, and culling them could cause a myriad of unintended ecological consequences. Moreover, it won’t actually save caribou from extinction in the long-run. By scapegoating wolves for the decline of caribou, Minister Kent is drawing attention away from the real caribou killer: the expansion of the tar sands.

  It is likely that without immediate habitat protection, the species will be permanently extirpated in Alberta. The Canadian government, however, prefers to protect the interest of the tar sands instead of species at risk.

  Tell Environment Minister Peter Kent to take real action to save caribou: by saving their habitat.

Feature story – January 26, 2012

 

zoom

“This government established a list of enemies nine months ago and has since launched a public attack on environmental and aboriginal groups that are raising concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the tar sands,” said Keith Stewart, coordinator of Greenpeace Canada’s Climate and Energy campaign. “Rather than dealing the devastating impacts of the tar sands, the Harper government is working with the oil industry to silence their critics.”The March 2011 “Pan-European Oil Sands Advocacy Strategy” prepared by the federal government to undermine support in the EU for cleaner fuels legislation lists “National and European level Politicians (especially from the ruling and influential parties)” as a primary target.

The strategy document, obtained by the Climate Action Network under Access to Information legislation, identifies the government’s “adversaries” as Canadian NGOs and environmental organizations, Aboriginal groups, competing industries and media in Europe (although the type of media seen as an adversary is redacted).

The list of “allies” includes European industry associations and companies (with Shell and BP singled out elsewhere as “like-minded allies”), as well as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, federal government departments, Alberta, business associations and unidentified NGOs. Disturbingly, the list of allies also includes the independent federal regulatory tribunal National Energy Board.

“Canadians should be concerned when a supposedly arms-length agency that is supposed to regulate the oil industry, including conducting hearings on the Enbridge’s proposed new tar sands pipeline across British Columbia, is listed as an ‘ally’ in a political strategy to lower environmental standards in other nations,” said Stewart.

Greenpeace also released a copy of minutes from March 2010, obtained under Access to Information legislation, between high-ranking federal officials, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and former PMO official Bruce Carson. These minutes show that it was the oil industry that initially approached the government about crafting a joint strategy for “upping their game” and to “turn up the volume” in promoting the tar sands.

“The latest attacks on environmental groups are part of an orchestrated campaign by the Harper government and the oil industry targeting anyone who dares to question the wisdom of tripling tar sands production,” said Stewart. “Rather than ‘turning up the volume’ in this pro-industry public relations campaign, the Harper government needs to start listening to the legitimate concerns of Canadians on the costs of dirty energy.”

Enlarge This Image

Related

• Coca-Cola looks to preserve Arctic haven for polar bears
• Differing diets make polar bears more vulnerable to ice loss

Alaska News & Features

Photos: Start the day with strata

In Nome, preparations to flush a million gallons of fuel across sea ice

Hundreds of polar bears in northeastern Manitoba may face an increased risk of starvation due to delayed ice formation along the western coast of Hudson Bay, conservationists say.

Higher-than-normal temperatures have prevented ice from forming in the region, putting it three to four weeks behind schedule, according to the Canadian Ice Service, a division of Environment Canada. As a result, minimum ice cover there is the lowest since 1971, Canadian Ice Service forecaster Luc Desjardins said.

Formation of sea ice is critical for polar bears, which use it as a platform for catching seals and other marine mammals.

While a recent aerial survey of 333 polar bears along the bay’s western coast showed the bears to be in good condition, conservationists worry the animals’ health will deteriorate quickly if ice does not form in the next few weeks.

“The conditions that are occurring are indicative of the ice coverage that we would see probably in the mid-October time frame, rather than the mid-November,” Desjardins told CBC News last month.

Normally by late November, a thin layer of ice up to 15 miles long would have formed, stretching seaward from the bay’s western and southern coastlines, he said.

“The ice is almost non-existent this year, compared to our long-term normal,” Desjardins said.

Where there is ice, “it’s very patchy in terms of formation and it’s not a distinct pattern that affects the entire length of the coast of Hudson Bay.”

Desjardins stressed that the amount of ice has fluctuated in recent years and 2010 levels are not “significantly different” from those of the last five or six years.

What is different, however, is temperature: the region’s air temperature is “consistently warmer” than in recent years, he said.

In Nunavut’s Foxe Basin, the temperature is 14 degrees above normal.

Winter is the polar bear’s feasting season. From November until early summer, they fatten themselves on ringed seals, bearded seals and other mammals. In the summer, during what’s called a “walking hibernation,” the average polar bear loses 1.6 kilograms of weight per day.

Ideally, the slow, heavy predators have enough weight by the end of the summer to make it back onto the ice platforms and hunt anew for fatty mammals.

“The longer that ice is in forming, the longer the polar bears have to survive on the fat reserves they put down in the spring and conserved right through the summer,” said Peter Ewin, an Arctic specialist for the World Wildlife Fund.

“The later it gets, the more weak bears there are who probably aren’t going to make it through,” he said.

On Nov. 17, Manitoba Conservation, along with the WWF, Polar Bears International, and York Factory First Nation Resource Management Board, conducted an aerial survey of 333 polar bears along Hudson Bay’s western coast. The bears had been off the ice since July 15.

The results were “surprisingly pleasant,” said Darryll Hedman, a regional wildlife manager for the provincial agency.

Many of the mostly single, adult males were relatively fat, with “wide rear ends” and a belly “with a dish to it,” Hedman said. Cubs were also considered to be doing well, based on how their fat rippled when they ran.

“As far as I’m concerned, the condition of the bears that we’ve seen in the last couple of days, they’re doing OK,” he said. “The condition of them was good.”

Hedman emphasized the aerial survey was “just a snapshot in time” and warned the bears will become “exponentially skinnier.”

“As time goes on, and the ice doesn’t come in, they’re going to be getting hungrier and hungrier,” he said.

Desjardins, Hedman and Ewin all agree the ice will come, eventually.

“Hudson Bay will freeze over this winter, there’s no doubt in my mind,” said ice expert Desjardins.

This story is posted on Alaska Dispatch as part of Eye on the Arctic, a collaborative partnership between public and private circumpolar media organizations.

Climate change sinks another Alaska village

Tuesday, 03 January 2012 12:28 Written by Alex DeMarban, Alaska Dispatch

Photo: Michael Brubaker. Alaska Dispatch.

The permafrost has sunk so much in one Northwest Alaska village that bridges are shifting, outdoor stairways hang over the ground and sagging water pipes are prone to break and freeze.

Those are a few of the ways climate change is affecting life in the Inupiat village of Selawik, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Center for Climate and Health.

“You essentially have the Venice of Northwest Alaska, where the whole community is gradually sinking and people are struggling with how they’ll possibly fix all this,” said Michael Brubaker, with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

Brubaker runs the center, which is studying the effects of climate change on facilities and people in Northwest Alaska. The consortium plans to turn its attention next to Bristol Bay villages in Southwest Alaska.

Village evaluates home damage

The effects of a changing climate are widespread in Selawik, some 70 miles southeast of Kotzebue. The village has 180 homes and it seems each has suffered one problem or another related to unstable tundra, said Carrie Skin, the city bookkeeper.

Windows are cracking. Doors are jamming. Ceilings are breaking loose from joists.

Stand a distance from her house and you’ll notice it’s not level. One side “lops toward the Selawik River,” which is five feet away and coming closer as it erodes, she said.

Skin signed up with the tribal housing department to have her house leveled, but that won’t happen any time soon. The list for leveling work is long and tribal funds are limited.

“You have to be very lucky to be the chosen one,” she said.

At her mother’s house elsewhere in the village, the earth has shrunk away. Steps to the front door had to be extended in order to reach the ground, Skin said.

Several Alaskan villages affected

Selawik isn’t alone in its efforts to grapple with climate change. In numerous trips to five Northwest Alaska communities over the last year and a half, Brubaker reports finding warmer temperatures are changing life in the Arctic, and often not for the better.

Snowmachiners are increasingly at risk of plunging through ice. Chunks of shoreline are crashing away. Electric poles are leaning. Boardwalks are breaking. And water plants are struggling with algae blooms and increased sediment from erosion, raising questions about how villages will pay for such problems.

The reports released by the consortium are unique because of Alaska’s position on the leading edge of climate change, and the impacts to the state’s most remote communities are rarely studied.

“Everywhere we go, we’re identifying big impacts to infrastructure, quite often in places that haven’t been talked about before,” Brubaker said.

So far, the consortium has published extensive findings on four villages. Some brief highlights from each include:

• In Point Hope, underground ice cellars carved out of the permafrost are melting and filling with water. Meat has spoiled as a result, leading to more stomach infections from botulism, salmonella, and E. coli.

• In Kivalina, erosion at a leach field in 2004 contributed to frozen water pipes at the washateria, the town water source. Nearly the entire village lacks running water, so residents were forced to melt ice to take sponge baths and wash hands through the winter. Health aides reported more respiratory and skin diseases during the shut-down.

• In Noatak, dwindling water in the river has for years prevented barge deliveries. Freight must be flown in, boosting the price of groceries and other products, including fuel, which cost around $9 a gallon this spring.

• In Kiana, the riverbanks are rapidly eroding. Four feet vanished last year. “At the current rate, houses and infrastructure located on the bluffs will be vulnerable to damage and landslide over the next decade,” that community report notes.

The project to document climate change in Northwest Alaska won’t include all 11 communities in the region, Brubaker said. The effort was initially funded with a $250,000 grant from the Indian Health Service, and those funds have dwindled.

But statewide interest in the project is growing. The Bristol Bay Native Association, using a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has hired the center to study three villages.

Brubaker plans to rely on past studies by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers other groups to determine which villages he’ll study in Bristol Bay — the region has more than 20 — and to conclude which communities are most vulnerable to climate change.

The center also recently won a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to train one villager in each of some 70 communities to serve as local climate-change observers starting next year.

Spotlight on Selawik

The report on Selawik, population 820, will be published in early 2012.

It will discuss problems including:

• Selawik’s above-ground pipes are shifting as the ground freezes and thaws, creating breaks in the lines and forcing the utility to spend more money to keep the pipes warm.

• Supports for two bridges are shifting and much of the ground underneath has eroded away. The bridges are either “sinking or jacking up out of the ground,” Brubaker can’t tell which.

• Thinning ice has made snowmachine travel increasingly risky.

Over the last dozen years, at least five snowmachiners have died near the village after breaking through ice, according to reports. Two died on separate snowmachines during a single incident in 1999. Three others died during an incident in 2005 when a sled and snowmachine broke through ice.

Lake shorelines around the village are also severely eroding, especially at nearby Inland Lake, Skin said.

“It’s massive, huge chunks of the ground falling away,” she said.

As for the river near Skin’s house, the tribe hopes to win grants for an erosion-control project. Perhaps sandbags will stop it, said Tanya Ballot, tribal administrator.

Skin isn’t hopeful. The river has moved about 10 feet toward her house in the last three decades, she said. Other erosion-control efforts, including old fuel drums along the banks, haven’t helped.

“My house is being jeopardized,” she said.

Contact Alex DeMarban at alex(at)alaskadispatch.com