Shell pulling up stakes in the Chukchi: contractors retrieve anchor systems.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Arctic Oil & Gas

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Royal Dutch Shell had a little unfinished business off Alaska's northern coast after it abandoned its exploration program last September.

The oil giant headed north in summer 2015 with a flotilla of twenty-nine vessels and two drilling units, carrying everything the company needed for its several weeks of planned exploration at the Burger J prospect. The company had spent $2.8 billion for offshore leases in Alaska's Arctic and had high hopes it would be able to tap into the estimated 26 billion barrels of oil thought to lie under the Outer Continental Shelf.

But when their efforts, which cost nearly $7 billion, proved disappointing, Shell's flotilla headed back south, leaving only a few dozen anchors and a few regulatory loose ends in the Arctic. This summer, the oil giant returned to retrieve its anchors and complete environmental science reporting and monitoring. The operation was a success.

"Recently, we completed the collection of the remaining equipment used for Shell Alaska's exploration and drilling operations in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas," Shell spokesman Curtis Smith says by email. "Contracted vessels were tasked with retrieving over fifty anchors from the Chukchi and Beaufort seas as well as completing required environmental science monitoring and reporting."

Ice Free Seas

Shell contracted with Fairweather LLC, an Anchorage-based logistics and environmental services company, for the project. Fairweather is a member of the Edison Chouest Offshore companies, a global marine transportation company based in Louisiana. Edison Chouest builds and operates a fleet of more than two hundred ships, including the ones used to retrieve Shell's anchors.

As with their exploration efforts, Shell staged the recovery from Unalaska. Three ships, the M/V Aiviq, the M/V Dino Chouest, and the M/V Ross Chouest, arrived in midsummer to take advantage of the few weeks the Chukchi and Beaufort are usually ice-free each year.

The Aiviq, which means walrus in Inupiaq, is a $200 million ice-breaking, anchor-handling, tug supply vessel built specifically for Shell's drilling operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi. When it was launched in 2011, Edison Chouest called it "the world's largest and most powerful anchor-handling icebreaker."

The Aiviq s main job is to handle the anchor lines that would attach drilling rigs to the sea floor. It is also designed to cut through three-foot-thick ice and has oil spill recovery capabilities.

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