Dear Peter,
This [1] could be relevant to your workshop on oil under sea ice, late
September in Italy.
Does anybody know how they'd deal with major gas (methane) leak when
drilling in the Arctic? This would be relevant to our "methane busting"
workshop, London, 3-4 September, where we will brainstorm on methods to
prevent potentially huge quantities of Arctic methane reaching the
atmosphere. Who is an expert on gas leaks, that we could invite?
Cheers,
John
---
[1] http://planetark.org/wen/62377
A major offshore Arctic oil spill could severely challenge the Coast
Guard, with no available infrastructure to base rescue and clean-up
operations, the Coast Guard commandant said on Monday.
"There is nothing up there to operate from at present and we're really
starting from ground zero," said Adm. Robert Papp Jr. "Now's the time to
be not just talking about it, but acting about it."
Several major oil companies, notably Royal Dutch Shell, have acquired
leases to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska. Arctic
waters are likely to be accessible to humans for longer periods as the
planet heats up.
In May, the extent of Arctic ice was the third-smallest since satellites
began collecting data in 1979, according to the U.S. National Snow and
Ice Data Center.
Noting that the Coast Guard sent 3,000 people to work on the 2010 BP oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Papp told reporters at a government
symposium on shrinking Arctic ice: "No way we could deploy several
thousand people as we did in the Deepwater Horizon spill."
The Coast Guard has no helicopters based on Alaska's North Slope, and no
U.S. agency has a helicopter there equipped to perform rescues at sea,
he said. There are no facilities that could serve as temporary hangars
for equipment, or any small boat facilities.
Housing for any emergency workers amounts to a few dozen hotel rooms, he
said.
LIQUID FUEL TURNS TO GEL
Even as the Arctic warms -- and it is warming faster than lower
latitudes -- temperatures are still extremely cold, which means
equipment built for operations in temperate zones need to be tested for
fitness in the far north.
For example, the Coast Guard flew a basic military cargo plane, the
C-130, in the Arctic and found that the craft's liquid fuel turned into
a gel when temperatures dipped below a certain level unless heaters were
applied to it, Papp said.
Only one U.S. icebreaker ship will be under way this year, he said.
Another is being decommissioned and a third ship is being updated. Papp
said China is building what will be the most powerful conventional
icebreaker in the world.
He praised the signing last month of the Arctic Search and Rescue
Agreement, where eight Arctic nations -- Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- agreed to
cooperate on rescues above the Arctic Circle.
The United States also needs to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty, Papp
said. He said other Arctic nations are using this pact to stake claims
to swaths of the extended continental shelf in the Arctic, and that U.S.
ratification would enable the United States to extend its sovereignty
there as well.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
