San Francisco: Shell’s second Arctic drilling rig cleared a lot of safety and security requirements on Monday when the US Coast Guard (UCG) issued it an important “certificate of compliance”.
The rig, Noble Discoverer, remains docked in Washington State waters whereas companion vessel the Polar Pioneer is already well on the way from Seattle to the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea where it is planned to do exploratory drilling.
USCG reviewed and approved more than a dozen upgrades that had been done on Noble Discoverer.
It’s not clear when Noble Discoverer might be heading off after Polar Pioneer but the latter rig received its certificate of compliance just a day before it departed Seattle for Alaska.
Polar Pioneer’s first port of call there will be Dutch Harbour where it will wait for a few remaining federal approvals.
The Noble Discoverer was the vessel involved in the unfortunate ending of Shell’s Arctic drilling campaign in 2012 when members of its crew pleaded guilty to eight felony charges including discharging polluted water and falsifying records.
