Followup: Greenpeace boat moves, another Shell boat arrives

| Environment | Seen at sea | West Seattle news

The presence of Greenpeace Esperanza off West Seattle shores earlier this week sparked some discussion following our report on the reason for its visit, the impending departure of two Shell rigs bound for Arctic oil drilling, so here’s a followup: The Esperanza moved to a Lake Union dock yesterday, and remains there, according to MarineTraffic.com tracking information. Today brought the arrival of another Shell-owned vessel that is expected to accompany the drilling rigs/ships Kulluk and Noble Discoverer (both at Vigor Shipyards) – it’s the blue-hulled boat you see in our photo above, the Aiviq. According to this Popular Mechanics report, it’s a new, Louisiana-built $200 million icebreaker. That’s twice the cost of the work that’s been done to the Kulluk at Vigor, according to this report from Petroleum News, which says Shell plans on “demonstrating its new well capping and containment system in Puget Sound within the next two to three weeks.”

thistle stair June 3, 2012 (10:14 am)

I hope the technology has improved since the gulf oil spill and I’m sure a lot of good,honest,competent people are working on it. Hopefully the corporation itself will treat the arctic better than they treat Nigeria, of course with their reputation of crimes against humanity,fraud and the worlds largest freshwater oil spill I am not holding my breath. Luckily we have those hated government regulators,whistle blowers,pesky media types,lawyers and whale hugging hippies to try and keep the company in line and prevent another catastrophic disaster. Best of luck to all involved, we need the energy,jobs and a productive environment.

Jim Wilke June 4, 2012 (10:54 am)

The Gulf spill occurred in 4,000 feet or water because environmentalists wanted oil rigs well offshore in case there was a spill…All the repair work had to be done by robots.

The Shell Alaska project will be in 150 feet of water; if anything goes wrong, they can work on it with divers.