By Associated Press, Monday, July 2, 12:11 AM
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — In choppy water under blue sky off Bellingham, Wash., a Shell Oil crew on Monday lowered a “capping stack” 200 feet in the water and put it through maneuvers with underwater robots connected by cable to operators on the surface, a test that fulfilled one of the final steps required for permission to drill exploratory wells in Arctic waters.The capping stack looks like a giant spark plug and is designed to kill an undersea oil well blowout by providing a metal-to-metal seal on a malfunctioning blowout preventer.
Shell is sending the capping stack, skimmers, boom and a containment dome on board a flotilla accompanying drill ships to Alaska’s northern shores as part of a spill response plan that has the blessing of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Shell expects final approvals within weeks and drilling by late this month.But environmental groups contend the government has it wrong. Despite reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, their basic objections remain. Shell has vastly overstated its ability to respond to a worst-case scenario spill in open water, said attorney Holly Harris of Earthjustice, and no oil company has demonstrated it can clean up a spill that lingers into the Arctic’s eight months of sea ice.
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