Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow

Author:Rachel Maddow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, pdf
Published: 2019-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Three weeks after the unfortunate we swear we didn’t run aground incident, the Disco and the Kulluk and most of the rest of the Shell fleet were all still lying low in Dutch Harbor, more than a thousand miles away from the drill sites in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. A small commercial icebreaker and a couple of other ships were at the two sites, making early preparations, but it was becoming evident that Shell’s paperwork excellence had outrun its operational excellence by a long shot. Even at that late date, the linchpin of Shell’s four-hundred-plus-page Oil Spill Response Plan, the Arctic Challenger—tasked with hauling the dispersants and the big paper towels and the crucial and promised containment dome to Shell’s Arctic drilling sites—was back in Bellingham, Washington, just north of Seattle, still on the maritime operating table. Superior Energy Services was having a hell of a time converting the ship into a certifiable, ice-class oil spill response vessel. Like the Disco, the Arctic Challenger—a vintage 1976 barge—had grown a bit flabby over its long life, and understandably so. It had been inactive for the previous ten years. Superior was working overtime to upgrade the ship’s electrical system, its fire safety system, and its entire piping system, among other things, to gain the required Coast Guard certification.

After conferring with the Coast Guard, local reporters suggested that those prospects didn’t look great: “As of August 4, about 400 items still needed to be completed, inspected or reviewed.” Even as the Disco and the Kulluk and the tugs and icebreakers loitered in Alaska, watching the days tick by on the calendar, neither the Challenger nor the containment dome it was to carry was ready to take the in-water tests required before the Coast Guard could certify the ship for Arctic duty. “The opportunity to drill exploratory wells this year in Alaska’s Arctic is rapidly diminishing,” was the lede of a McClatchy wire story on August 14, 2012, “and it’s a situation of Shell’s own making, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters.” Salazar, who was on a personal visit to the drill sites in the far north of Alaska, sounded a little peeved. “The waters in the Chukchi around the so-called Burger find are in fact already open,” he said. “So it’s not a matter of ice. It’s a matter of whether or not Shell has the mechanical capability to be able to comply with the exploration effort that had been approved by the government.”

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