Kulluk

Kulluk

Ship data flag  Marshall Islands Callsign V7JH8 home port Majuro Owner Shell EEP Shipping company Noble three of a kind Shipyard Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Company, Tamano Build number F564 Whereabouts 2014 demolished in Zhoushan

Ship dimensions and crew length 83.80 m ( Lüa ) width 69.24 m Side height 18.50 m Draft Max. 12.52 m measurement 27,968 GT / 8,391 NRZ

Transport capacities Load capacity 9,902 dwt

Others Classifications Det Norske Veritas Registration numbers IMO no. 8752219

The Kulluk was an oil rig built in Japan in 1983 , which was detached from the tug on December 31, 2012 during a sea towing and then stranded in the Gulf of Alaska .

Calls

The rig was used in the 1983 shipyard Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Company in Tamano built for operation by Gulf Canada Resources. The unit without its own drive system was specially designed for use in regions with high ice accumulation. Gulf Canada Resources used the unit for around ten years, launched it in 1993 and renamed it Kullu in 1998 . The island was already scheduled for scrapping before the British-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell acquired it in 2005, renamed it back to Kulluk in 2007 and had it overhauled for 292 million US dollars.

Together with the ship Noble Discoverer , the drilling platform was involved in the exploration of oil deposits in the Arctic Ocean . According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), both ships exceeded the approved emissions of nitrogen oxides in 2012 . Technical changes and a new approval procedure are necessary for the exploration to continue.

Stranded in 2012

The oil rig that ran aground off Sitkalidak Island .

After the end of her mission in the Beaufort Sea , the Kulluk was on her voyage to Seattle at the end of December 2012 in tow by the US anchor- handling tug Aiviq . This maneuver was also used to evade an Alaska state tax . After the 18-man towing crew of the Kulluk had to be taken off board on December 29th due to a severe storm with waves up to eleven meters high , the Aiviq was forced to disconnect the towing connection on December 31st, whereupon the island around 9 p.m. off Sitkalidak Iceland ran aground.

On the island there were a total of almost 570 cubic meters of various oils that, according to the United States Coast Guard, did not leak.

On January 6, 2013 it was possible to establish a tow connection with the island. According to the authorities , the Kulluk was safely towed and anchored in a harbor in a bay on Kodiak Island during a twelve-hour rescue operation .

As a result of the accident and other irregularities in the exploration of oil deposits in the Arctic Ocean, the United States Department of the Interior announced an examination of the procedure by Royal Dutch Shell .

The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into the marine casualty found that the cause of the accident lay in Shell's inadequate risk assessment, which led to a plan for the abducted inadequate risk management.

Initially, the drilling platform was brought to Keppel FELS in Singapore by the dock ship Xiang Rui Kou in early 2013 . This ship then transported the rig to Zhoushan in 2014 , where it was scrapped.

Web links

Commons : Kulluk (drilling rig, 1983)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Report on the background to the accident
• Dates of the island at Det Norske Veritas (English)
• Grounded oil rig: Waves smash over Shell ship but amazingly there is NO SIGN of a spill on Alaska shoreline in the Daily Mail from 1 January 2013 (English)
• Shell drill ship runs aground off Alaska in The Sydney Morning Herald of January 2, 2013 (English)
• Unified Command: Kulluk Tow Incident (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ John M. Broder: Shell Violated Air Permits for Arctic Ships, EPA Says . In: New York Times . January 11, 2013.
2. ↑ Tom Bawden: New twist in stricken rig saga: Shell was moving it to avoid tax . In: The Independent . 4th January 2013.
3. ↑ Oil rig is towed into port. In: tagesschau.de . January 7, 2013, archived from the original on January 11, 2013 ; Retrieved January 7, 2013 . 
4. ↑ Shell: Stranded oil rig "Kulluk" arrived safely in port. In: Focus Online . January 8, 2013, accessed January 8, 2013 . 
5. ↑ John M. Broder, Clifford Krauss: Interior Dept. Expedites Review of Arctic Drilling After Accidents. In: New York Times . January 8, 2013.
6. ^ US Department of the Interior: Secretary Salazar Launches Expedited Assessment of 2012 Arctic Operations. January 8, 2013.
7. ↑ Grounding of Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Kulluk , National Transportation Safety Board , May 22, 2015, p. 12. (PDF, English)
8. ↑ Kulluk drilling rig sails on COSCO Heavy Lift Transporter. March 29, 2015, accessed January 5, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Discharge of drilling barge Kulluk Zhoushan. March 20, 2014, accessed January 5, 2018 . 
10. ^ Project 84. Recycling of the "Kulluk" oil rig. July 14, 2014, accessed January 5, 2018 . 
11. ↑ Kulluk. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .