Drilling Ship Drifting in Alaska Waters

[tomahawk6]

http://news.yahoo.com/runaway-alaska-oil-rig-dragged-two-tugs-miles-003752604.html

LONDON/ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The runaway oil rig that ran aground in Alaska on New Year's Eve dragged two vessels trying to control it more than 10 miles toward shore in just over an hour before the crews cut it loose to save themselves in "near hurricane" conditions.

Details were still emerging on Wednesday from the U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Dutch/Shell, the company at the center of a controversial and accident-prone Arctic oil drilling program of which the Kulluk drillship is a vital part.

They paint a frightening picture of the 28,000-tonne, saucer-shaped rig being thrust toward the shore on waves up to 35 feet high driven by winds up to 62 mph, pulling its main towing vessel, the Aiviq, and a tug, the Alert, behind it.

"We are talking about near hurricane-strength conditions," said Darci Sinclair of the Kulluk Tow Incident Unified Command, set up by the U.S. Coast Guard and the companies involved. "Regaining control became extremely challenging."

The unified command said the Kulluk was still aground on Sitkalidak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, but "upright and stable". Updates were available at www.kullukresponse.com.

The 30-year-old Kulluk is operated by Noble Corp and was refitted by Shell for its summer 2012 drilling expedition in the Beaufort Sea off northern Alaska.

Shell spent $4.5 billion preparing for extraction activities there and in the Chukchi Sea further east, but has yet to complete a single well, while facing some embarrassing setbacks.

Headlines that raise questions about the wisdom of drilling so far north in such a environmentally delicate and technically challenging place were not expected so early in 2013, given that activity stopped for the season two months ago.

Any Kulluk damage could threaten Shell's 2013 drilling program because its oil-spill plans require a second rig to be available at all times in case a relief well needs to be drilled to kill the well. That is the Noble-owned Discoverer, which would also be unable to drill without another rig nearby.

David Smith, spokesman at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in Washington DC, said his division would not yet speculate on the summer. The earliest date that the drilling season could have started last year was July 1.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said the Kulluk's hull appeared sound after a few over flights. More were planned on Wednesday, with more than 600 people supporting the response.

"This is a very large and complex response and it is important that the American public and our elected officials understand the dangerous and difficult challenges being faced by the response crews," Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo, commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska, said in the statement.

The Kulluk was on its way south for the winter. It had been towed east from the Beaufort, and then south through the Bering Strait that separates the northernmost U.S. state from Siberia.

On December 28, about half way to its winter destination in Seattle, and 50 miles south of Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, engine failure struck the Aiviq - an icebreaker that is less than a year old, and whose name means "Walrus".

The weather was already rough and the Kulluk's 18-strong crew was lifted off, when a doomed four-day battle to keep the Kulluk off the rocks began.

The effort ran into deeper difficulty a few hours after nightfall on December 31, with the shore less than 19 miles away.

Aiviq, one of two vessels attached at the time, lost its line. It was re-attached, and battled on against the elements along with the Alert, but the coastline kept getting closer as the storm pushed all three vessels north-eastwards.

At 8:15 p.m. on Monday (January 1, 0515 GMT), the order came to cut the Kulluk lines to save the Aiviq, the Alert and the crews.

At 8:30 p.m., the lines were cut, and by 8:48, a trajectory map on the unified command website shows, the Kulluk was aground about 1,600 feet from the shore on Sitkalidak Island, near the larger Kodiak Island. The Kulluk, the wind, and the waves had dragged Aiviq and Alert more than 10 miles in just over an hour.

The vessel settled on what one Coast Guard official described as "loose rock and sand".

Noble had no immediate comment. Shell in London has made a series of statements on the progress of the operation, but had nothing to add on Wednesday, and referred calls to the unified command. Shell in Houston could not be reached for comment.

"ONE DISASTER TO THE NEXT"

The spill risk from the drillship is limited to the 143,000 gallons of ultra-low-sulfur diesel and 12,000 gallons of other oil products on board. Still, opponents of Arctic drilling said the accident showed Shell was unable to keep the Arctic safe.

"Shell has lurched from one Arctic disaster to the next, displaying staggering ineptitude every step of the way," Greenpeace campaigner Ben Ayliffe said on Wednesday.

"Were the pristine environment of the frozen north not at risk of an oil spill it would be almost comical. Instead it's tragic," Ayliffe said. "We're moving closer to a major catastrophe in the Arctic and the U.S. government appears unwilling to provide either the needed oversight or emergency backup the company's incompetence requires."

Shell's Arctic campaign has been bedeviled by problems. The Coast Guard briefly detained the Discoverer in December in Seward, Alaska, on safety concerns. A mandatory oil-containment barge, the Arctic Challenger, failed for months to meet requirements for seaworthiness, and a ship mishap resulted in damage to a key piece of equipment intended to cap a blown well.

Asked why the Kulluk was still at sea two months after work stopped, one contract drilling source said the "demobilization" process after drilling can take days or weeks depending on the rig model and its anchoring. It was also possible the weather was rough enough over the last few months to delay transit.

Replacing the Kulluk, if it ends up being badly damaged, would add to the cost of the accident for Shell, which must reimburse the federal and state governments for response costs.

The Discoverer, which it has under a contract with Noble, costs Shell $240,000 per day - or a few-hundred million dollars over the life of the two-year contract. Shell had to spend $292 million upgrading the Kulluk, when was built in 1983 and had been slated to be scrapped before Shell bought it in 2005.

 

[eurowing]

This will be used as evidence that the Enbridge Bitumen pipeline is too dangerous for BC waters. I have to admit to being surprised at the grounding of the rig.  I really expected them to get it under control.

 

[chrisf]

Has the rig broken up? Has there been any fuel or lubricants spilled?

The situation isn't "out of control" yet.

It's grounded in a spot where it can be recovered.

 

[Scott]

This will be used as evidence that the Enbridge Bitumen pipeline is too dangerous for BC waters. I have to admit to being surprised at the grounding of the rig.  I really expected them to get it under control.

Anyone trying to use that as evidence wuld be comparing apples to bowling balls. A pipeline and a seagoing vessel are quite different.

And a Sig Op has it right - nothing has been spilled yet.

 

[larry Strong]

It's already started

Shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from CTV

Critics: Grounding of rig shows company not ready for Arctic drilling

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The grounding of a petroleum drilling ship on a remote Alaska island has refuelled the debate over oil exploration in the U.S. Arctic Ocean, where critics for years have said the conditions are too harsh and the stakes too high to allow dangerous industrial development.

The drilling sites are 1,600 kilometres from Coast Guard resources, and environmentalists argue offshore drilling in the Arctic's fragile ecosystem is too risky. So when a Royal Dutch Shell PLC ship went aground on New Year's Eve on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska, they pounced -- saying the incident foreshadowed what will happen north of the Bering Strait if drilling is allowed.

For oil giant Shell, which leads the way in drilling in the frontier waters of the U.S Arctic, a spokesman said the grounding will be a learning experience in the company's years long effort to draw oil from beneath the ocean floor, which it maintains it can do safely. Though no wells exist there yet, Shell has invested billions of dollars gearing up for drilling in the Beaufort and the Chukchi seas, off Alaska's north and northwest coast.


The tugboat Aiviq travels with the mobile drilling unit Kulluk in tow 116 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. (U.S Coast Guard, Chris Usher)


No oil spill seen after Shell ship runs aground off of Alaska

The potential bounty is high: The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 26.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exist below Arctic waters.

Environmentalists note the Beaufort and the Chukchi seas are some of the wildest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. They also are among the most fragile, supporting polar bears, the ice seals they feed on, walrus, endangered whales and other marine mammals that Alaska Natives depend on for their subsistence culture.

"The Arctic is just far different than the Gulf of Alaska or even other places on earth," said Marilyn Heiman, U.S. Arctic director for the Pew Environment Group.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC in 2008 spent $2.1 billion on Chukchi Sea leases and estimates it has spent a total of nearly US$5 billion on drilling efforts there and in the Beaufort.

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said the company has a long, successful history of working offshore in Alaska and is confident it can build another multi-decade business in the Arctic.

"Our success here is not by accident," Smith said. "We know how to work in regions like this. Having said that, when flawless execution does not happen, you learn from it, and we will."

The drill ship that operated in the Beaufort Sea, the Kulluk, a circular barge with a funnel-shape hull and no propulsion system, ran ashore Monday on Sitkalidak Island, which is near the larger Kodiak Island in the gulf.

The ship had left Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Island under tow behind the 360-foot (110-meter) anchor handler Aiviq on Dec. 22. It was making its way to a Pacific Northwest shipyard for maintenance and upgrades when it ran into a vicious storm -- a fairly routine winter event for Alaska waters.

The tow line snapped Dec. 27. Shell vessels and the Coast Guard reattached tow lines at least four times. High wind and seas that approached 50 feet (15 metres) frustrated efforts to control the rig, and it ran aground on a sand and gravel beach.

Shell, the drill ship operators and transit experts, and the Coast Guard are planning the salvage operation.

Calmer weather conditions on Wednesday allowed a team of five salvage experts to be lowered by helicopter to the Kulluk to conduct a three-hour structural assessment. Also taken to the Kulluk was a state-owned emergency towing system for use in the operation.

"There are still no signs of any sheen or environmental impact and the Kulluk appears to be stable," Coast Guard Capt. Paul Mehler said Wednesday night in a telephone briefing. He flew over the rig earlier in the day with a Shell representative and an Alaska Environmental Conservation Department official.

Mehler said the assessment team that checked the ship Wednesday was working with salvage planners but it was too early to speculate on a time line for moving the ship.

He said he saw four life boats on the shoreline but there was no indication that other debris had been ripped from the ship.

The overflight in rain and 35 mph (56 kph) winds showed a few birds but no marine mammals near the rig, said Steve Russell of the Environmental Conservation Department.

The state of Alaska has been an enthusiastic supporter of Arctic offshore drilling. More than 90 per cent of its general fund revenue comes from oil earnings. However, the trans-Alaska pipeline has been running at less than one-third capacity as reserves diminish in North Slope fields. State officials see Arctic offshore drilling as a way to replenish the trans-Alaska pipeline while keeping the state economy vital.

In September, two Shell ships sent drill bits into the U.S. Arctic Ocean floor for the first time in more than two decades. They created top holes and initial drilling for two exploratory wells. Drilling ended on the last day of October.

The grounding in the North Pacific is not a wellhead blowout in the Arctic, and not a drop of oil has been detected in the water. But environmental groups say it's a bad sign.

Drill rigs in Arctic waters could be affected by ice any time during the four-month open water season, said Heiman of the Pew Environment Group. The other threats -- near hurricane-force winds compounded by cold and darkness -- were seen in the grounding, she said.

"We know that in the Arctic and in the gulf it's not uncommon to have pretty high seas, and you have to take precautions," she said. "If you're going to dill in those types of conditions, or even move vessels in those conditions, you have to have strong, Arctic-specific gear and equipment and safety training. It has to be very vigorous, and I don't think we're there yet."

Shell was fortunate in some ways, she said, that the Kulluk experienced problems near Kodiak.

"Up in the Arctic, you are 1,000 miles away from any Coast Guard station and the kind of response they were able to deploy in Kodiak," she said. The Coast Guard the last few summers has staged equipment and personnel in the Arctic. That has meant a couple of helicopters and possibly a cutter, Heiman said. It in no way can be compared to the Gulf of Mexico and the resources available for BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.

"It's remote. There are no roads. There's no real, true spill response capability like you would have in the gulf, where you have ports and harbours and boats and fishing boats and vessels everywhere," she said.

Shell has said its preparations will allow it to operate safely far from the Coast Guard base. Like a backcountry camper, Shell has promised to carry all the response equipment needed to the isolated drilling sites: a fleet of more than 20 response vessels that could respond in either the Beaufort of the Chukchi.

Shell spokesman Smith said the company remains confident in its ability to operate safely.

"We encountered severe weather basically all summer long in the Arctic," he said. "While it was challenging, the personnel and the assets and the rigs performed very well."

When a massive ice flow moved toward the drill ship operating in the Chukchi after less than a day of drilling, Shell released the vessel from anchors and moved out of the way.

"As disappointing as that was, given how long we had waited to start drilling -- we were only a day in -- we had the time and made the decision to disconnect from anchors and safely move off," Smith said. "That's how responsible operators work in the Arctic, or anywhere, really."

The Aiviq has towed the Kulluk more than 6,437 kilometres and experienced conditions seen before the grounding, Smith said. It was no accident, Smith said, that additional vessels were standing by in Seward.

It's too soon to know what led to the grounding, Smith said, but the failure of the Aiviq's engines for a time after the initial separation and the inability to re-establish an ideal tow connection were factors.

"It's clear that a sequence of unlikely events compounded over a short period of time, underscored by the complete loss of power to the engines of the Aiviq," he said.

Larry

 

[Scott]

Does anyone else see the separation between drilling and a rig in transit getting fucked up? I do.

I'll agree that the incident would not have started if they were not actively searching for oil, but it could have just as easily been a fishing boat, container vessel...anything that suffered a mechanical failure and got hung up on the rocks.

 

[garb811]

There you go, letting logic run wild with your thinking again. 

 

[Good2Golf]

... The spill risk from the drillship is limited to the 143,000 gallons of ultra-low-sulfur diesel and 12,000 gallons of other oil products on board. Still, opponents of Arctic drilling said the accident showed Shell was unable to keep the Arctic safe....

And yet no one is calling for the cessation of passenger ferry service, even though M/V Queen of the North had 60,000 gallons of marine (class 40) diesel aboard when she was run aground by her watch crew in 2006...


Regards
G2G

 

[eurowing]

Anyone trying to use that as evidence wuld be comparing apples to bowling balls. A pipeline and a seagoing vessel are quite different.

And a Sig Op has it right - nothing has been spilled yet.

It can be extrapolated easily.  The pipeline is going to fill ships. The ships are going to be navigating hazardous waters and are also supposed to be tethered to one tow vessel with a second as backup.  I'm pro pipeline. I like jobs that pay good wages and benefits, but I feel I am a minority in BC.

 

[Scott]

It's quite the leap in logic if it is extrapolated. Think about it. You'd be a minority in places like Vancouver where no one has a dog in the fight, but I'd imagine there is no shortage of folks supporting this in places like Dawson Creek, Ft. St. John, Ft. Nelson, and maybe even approaching the area the terminal is supposed to be. But, like always, media only gives good coverage to those against the idea.

 

[tomahawk6]

A better comparison might be the oil terminal at Valdez,Alaska.

"The Valdez Marine Terminal is an oil port in Valdez, at the southern end of the Alaska Pipeline. The terminal was the point of departure for the Exxon Valdez just prior to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

There are 18 holding tanks at the terminal, and an average of three to five oil tankers depart from the terminal each week. Since the pipeline became operational in 1977, more than 15,000 tankers full of oil have left the terminal."

 

[Scott]

15,000 trips. 1 wreck caused by:
-insufficiently rested crew
-collision avoidance radar turned off
-iceberg avoidance radar promised but not installed
-ship outside normal lanes due to iceberg presence
-lack of available personnel and equipment for cleanup
among others

Like Piper Alpha and Ocean Ranger, among others, the oil industry can point to this incident as one of those benchmark cases that made them think differently after. Among the differing thought processes is a steadfast knowledge that someone will come after them if they fuck it up again - which makes doing it right the first time that much more advantageous.

 

[chrisf]

Since there hasn't been a follow-up posted, the Kulluk has been recovered.

http://www.alaskajournal.com/Alaska-Journal-of-Commerce/January-Issue-2-2013/Kulluk-recovered-investigations-begin/

There are no signs of any POL lost from the rig itself, however apparently 4 life boats and a rescue boat were lost during the towing, and there are concerns about fuel potentially being lost from these boats.

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article1313452.ece

 

[Scott]

Its recovery is not news, it breaking up and leaking oil everywhere would be.

Fuel lost from the lifeboats wouldn't concern me much, those numbers won't be that high, compared.

 

[eurowing]

I never saw a single news article tieing it to the proposed BC Pipeline. It seems I was wrong! I am rather pleased about being wrong in this case.

 

[tomahawk6]

An after action report of sorts.

http://www.adn.com/2013/01/12/2750698/questions-swirl-about-whether.html

By LISA DEMER — ldemer@adn.com

When Royal Dutch Shell's oil drilling rig Kulluk and tow ship, the Aiviq, pulled out of Dutch Harbor the afternoon of Dec. 21 for a long, slow trip to Seattle, Shell says it was relying on its consultant's weather forecast to ensure crews -- and prized vessels -- arrived safely.

"The forecast was within the operational thresholds to begin the journey," Shell spokesman Curtis

Smith said Friday afternoon. Without that window, the Shell vessels would not have left Dutch Harbor, he said.

But less than a week into the trip, as the Shell-contracted Aiviq hauled the Kulluk across the Gulf of Alaska, one of the region's notorious storms hit with a vengeance. Over five days, multiple vessels that came to help lost towlines to the thrashing Kulluk. The rig, by then unmanned, grounded Dec. 31 just off Sitkalidak Island, south of Kodiak.

As inquiries by the Coast Guard, the Obama administration and U.S. Sen. Mark Begich try to get to the bottom of the serial failures, questions are swirling about whether the Aiviq was capable of towing the Kulluk during the type of storm that regularly sweeps the Gulf of Alaska, and whether government oversight was adequate.

Shell's assessment of the forecast as favorable was seriously flawed, says Cliff Mass, a University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences whose specialty is weather forecasting.

The North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska are among the stormiest places on Earth, he said. Forecasts more than four or five days out quickly become unreliable. And even the short-term forecast on Dec. 21 pointed to rough weather coming, Mass said.

"They were showing storms. The models were predicting stuff," Mass said. "The whole logic fails, in a number of ways." His models from Dec. 21 showed storm-generating low-pressure systems already forming in the Aleutians.

Mass was so irritated by Shell's assertions that he wrote a lengthy post disputing them on his weather blog.

"Shell Oil made a misguided and poorly informed decision," he concluded.

The National Weather Service on Dec. 21 predicted 35 mph winds and 12-foot seas by Dec. 25 in the area where the Kulluk eventually grounded.

Data from buoys in the Gulf of Alaska show that gale force winds -- 39 mph or stronger -- occur 15 percent of the time during December and January, according to the weather service. Seas of 17 feet or higher occur about 20 percent of the time. The Gulf experiences hurricane-force storms with winds topping 74 mph two or three times a year, the weather service said.

Asked to provide the forecast Shell used, Smith initially referred the Daily News to the company's consultant, ImpactWeather, located in Houston, Texas. But in an email Friday he said the private forecaster provided wind and wave predictions similar to the National Weather Service.

The severity and duration of the coming storm wasn't clear until Dec. 24, a day before it hit, Smith said. "The storm did not materialize undetected," he wrote.

ImpactWeather cannot discuss services for a particular client, said Chris Wolf, the company's marketing director, but "in meteorological science, there is no certainty assigned to any of it."

Wolf said she hadn't seen the forecast for Shell. "That's a completely different part of the company and they are looking into it," she said. The company wants to examine what happened, too, she said.

Mass attended the annual conference of the American Meteorological Society in Austin, Texas, last week. He saw that ImpactWeather had a table, "so I went over there and I said, 'Did you give a two-week weather forecast (to Shell)?' " Mass said. "And they started laughing at me."

No one could produce a reliable two-week forecast for that area, Mass said.

Neither Shell, the Coast Guard nor a command team that has managed the Kulluk situation leading up to and after the grounding would provide a copy of the towing plan prepared for the trip, or any information it contained about the maximum waves and winds the tow setup could be expected to handle.

"That specific information is currently being gathered for the purpose of internal and external investigations -- the outcome of which (external investigations) will be made public in the future," Smith said. (Shell has not said whether it will make its own internal investigation public.)

The towing plan was reviewed by a Coast Guard marine inspector in Anchorage after Shell, or one of its contractors, voluntarily submitted it, said Petty Officer David Mosley.

While the Coast Guard didn't formally approve the plan -- that wasn't required -- the specially-designed Aiviq, with four engines, seemed more than capable, "even in very extreme conditions," said Capt. Paul Mehler, the Coast Guard commander in Anchorage.

And extreme they were. During the worst of it, on Dec. 31, crews reported 60 mph winds, gusts topping 75 mph, 29-foot seas and occasional waves of 40 feet or more.



'CONSTANTLY EXTREME'

At a community meeting in Kodiak Wednesday, retired school teacher and former fisherman George Griffing asked Shell officials why they seemed surprised by the December storm and why the company relied on a forecast that was going to be outdated long before the Kulluk made it across the Gulf of Alaska.

The Aiviq's top speed during the tow was about 4.5 mph, a rowboat pace. It alone was supposed to tow the Kulluk, as it had done last summer on the journey north from Seattle.

If the storm that grounded the Kulluk was extreme, Griffing said, then the Gulf is "constantly extreme" in winter. Why leave Alaska in winter, with the predictable challenges of darkness and foul weather, he asked.

Shell had originally planned for the Kulluk to winter over in Dutch Harbor in a special $1 million custom dock.

Before the tow went bad, Shell spokesman Smith said the timing of the Kulluk's departure was motivated in part by the possibility that the company might incur a multi-million-dollar state tax liability if the rig was still in Alaska on Jan. 1. After the grounding, he said he misspoke and that while Shell was aware of the tax issue, the decision to leave port came after inspections revealed the extent of needed off-season maintenance, including replacement of the rig's cranes. Shipyard work is difficult in Dutch Harbor, he said, because of challenging logistics, unpredictable flying weather and a limited work force.

At Wednesday's meeting, Shell's Alaska operations manager Sean Churchfield said a lot of work went into designing a solid tow plan, including weather forecasting, routing and equipment capabilities. Shell expects the investigations to explain the multiple failures of towline equipment, he said, as well as why all four of the Aiviq's engines lost power and had to be repaired at sea during the storm.

A warranty surveyor who works for Shell and is expert in marine operations had to approve the tow plan; the surveyor inspected the rig, the fastenings and tow equipment, Smith said in an e-mail. A tow master, who was aboard the Kulluk until it was evacuated, also had to sign off. Several high-level department heads at Shell approved the plan. So did the captain of the Aiviq, Smith said.

"It's quite a process," he said.

Shell was bringing the Kulluk back from the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska's north coast. The rig was used to drill the top part of a single well during the short 2012 drilling season, Shell's first in the Alaska Arctic in two decades. Environmentalists argue that troubles with the Kulluk and Shell's other drilling rig, the Noble Discoverer, show the company is not adequately prepared.

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency said both drilling rigs had multiple violations of their air emissions permits. Shell says it welcomes various inquiries but remains confident in its program.

Shell says it has invested some $292 million in upgrades to the 30-year-old Kulluk, which it bought in 2005, but the company hasn't been willing to provide an estimate of the rig's value. Shell has put nearly $5 billion into its Alaska drilling program, counting the money spent on oil leases.

"This incident was not caused by weather," Smith said in an email Friday. "It was compounded by it. It appears that a sequence of unlikely events occurred over a short period of time -- underscored by the complete loss of power to the propulsion engines on the Aiviq."



SHIP ON STEROIDS

A subsidiary of Edison Chouest Offshore, a Louisiana-based private maritime company, built the 360-foot-long, $200 million Aiviq for Shell as a multi-purpose Arctic ship. Edison Chouest owns it and contracts with Shell to operate it.

The Aiviq can break ice. It can help recover spilled oil. It can anchor drilling rigs to the sea floor. It has spacious crew quarters. And it can tow.

Cmdr. Jim Rocco of the Coast Guard's Outer Continental Shelf National Center of Expertise in Morgan City, La., said the Aiviq is the biggest vessel of its type in the country.

"This is what we might consider an offshore supply vessel on steroids. Because it does have all the power it has and just its sheer size," Rocco said. "I remember the first time I saw that vessel. I thought, 'Did somebody just cut off the front of a cruise ship and make that the Aiviq?' "

The Kulluk situation has drawn hundreds of posts on the popular maritime blog, gCaptain. Some commenters have wondered whether two small, traditional tugs might have worked better than a massive, challenging-to-maneuver ship like the Aiviq.

Rocco said the Aiviq is well designed to hold and move the Kulluk, which weighs 18,681 tons empty. Support vessels like the Aiviq are commonly used for towing mobile oil rigs, he said. But two smaller tugs might maneuver better if the crews were close to shore or trying to get to a safe harbor, an idea that was considered shortly before the Kulluk grounded.

Repeated calls by the Daily News to Edison Chouest to discuss the Aiviq were not returned.

The firm's president, Gary Chouest, is a heavyweight political campaign donor. Chouest, his employees and close family members are the top contributors to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, and among the top donors to Sen. Mark Begich, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.



A TURNING SAUCER

In a call from the Alex Haley, a Coast Guard cutter helping the Kulluk and Aiviq almost from the start, Lt. Dave Gilbert compared the 160-foot-tall derrick at the center of the Kulluk to "a sail that was pulling them back."

Of at least five vessels that had a towline on the Kulluk at various times before the grounding, only the tugboat Alert, owned by Crowley Marine Services, never lost its tether.

Yet in the pummeling Dec. 31 storm, even the Alert was pulled backwards by the Kulluk. Four miles from land, its crew was ordered to let its line go to avoid jeopardizing their safety and their vessel.

Towing the round Kulluk is nothing like towing a big oil tanker, which the Alert, as a Prince William Sound tanker escort vessel, is designed to do, said Charlie Nalen, Crowley Marine Services vice president of operations for Valdez.

"This big saucer is turning. It's an ungainly structure," Nalen said. In contrast, a tanker will follow along behind a tug.

The Alert's captain during the ordeal, Rodney Layton, is Crowley's most veteran skipper with 30-plus years of experience. At a crew changeover this week in Seward, where a Shell executive personally thanked the crew, Layton said the December storm was the worst he has ever seen. Crashing waves 50 feet tall damaged the tug's lights. The crew worked in pitching seas, darkness and cold; they said they were glad for their training in emergency drills in Prince William Sound, Nalen said.

The towline to the Kulluk was maybe 300 feet long, a football field away, the captain said during the debriefing, as Nalen recalled.

"And he said it was the shortest 300 feet he had ever seen."