Shell Oil Co. had to postpone its Arctic drilling until 2014 after one of
its oil rigs ran aground off the Alaska coast this winter, but Shell’s
efforts to open a new frontier of oil exploration in the Arctic Ocean
continue in Puget Sound.
The oil giant passed a key test with federal regulators in March in the
waters off Anacortes, Wash., north of Seattle.
Neither Shell nor the federal government announced the results, but a
Shell contractor successfully deployed Shell’s Arctic oil-spill
containment system in Samish Bay in March.
Crews from Superior Energy Services of Houston slowly lowered a 20-foot
dome over the side of Shell’s Arctic Challenger barge and down into the
150-foot-deep water.
They anchored the dome and used it to suck up sea water at a rate of
about 2,000 gallons a minute.
The dome system is supposed to do the same to oil and gas gushing from
the bottom of the Arctic Ocean if a blown-out well cannot be capped.
Earlier tests of the containment dome had gone badly. In September, the
dome wound up “crushed like a beer can.” Superior rebuilt and reinforced
the containment dome before testing it again this winter and spring.In an
email, Nicholas Pardi with the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental
Enforcement (part of the US Department of the Interior), said the spill
system handled more than twice the volume of oil that would be expected
in a worst-case Arctic-well blowout.
Unprecedented Transparency?
Pardi did not respond to KUOW’s requests to interview either of the BSEE
officials who were on board the Arctic Challenger. Nor did he provide the
requested documentation of the test results.
Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama has proclaimed his
administration’s commitment to “an unprecedented level of openness in
government.” On January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a memo ordering
federal agency heads to make information about their agencies’ operations
and decisions more rapidly and readily available to the public.“The way
to make government accountable is to make it transparent,” Obama said in
announcing the memo, “so that the American people can know exactly what
decisions are being made, how they’re being made and whether their
interests are being well served.”
Four years later, journalists and open-government advocates complain that
many federal agencies — from the Environmental Protection Agency to the
Food and Drug Administration — never seemed to get the memo. Access to
government scientists and others with first-hand expertise is more
difficult than ever, according to the journalism groups. It can be
difficult or impossible to get many Obama administration officials,
whether they’re experts, public relations staff or agency heads, to
answer questions on the record.
Curtis Smith of Shell-Alaska declined to comment on the successful test
of the Arctic Challenger’s oil-spill system, except to say that Shell has
a 10-day information blackout before its quarterly earnings reports.

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