Arctic Challenger

Arctic Challenger is a barge which has been converted by Superior Energy Services for use in the Arctic drilling operations of Shell Oil Company. This barge is designed to function as a "novel engineering solution" which they refer to as an Arctic Containment System to respond should a blowout event occur at drilling sites in the Beaufort or Chukchi Seas. According to testimony provided to Senator Mark Begich on 11 October 2012, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo said the certification for the Shell spill barge Arctic Challenger to operate in Alaska was given on the 10th of October at the Bellingham, Washington shipyard where it was constructed. Ostebo is commander of the Coast Guard’s 17th district, which covers Alaska.

The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) reported that the vessel was able to meet their requirement for processing 2000 gallons of seawater per minute during testing in March, 2013.

Greenberry Industrial has been contracted to provide fabrication and construction services at the Port of Bellingham in Washington state. Shell Oil Company intends Arctic Challenger and it's onboard systems to serve as their "fourth line of defense" against a blow out in their drilling operations in the Arctic that could result in a seafloor oil gusher.

The major component of the project is the containment dome which is designed to be lowered over the blowout to vacuum up the spewing crude oil and natural gas and to deliver those products to the equipment on the ship for separation and processing to ameliorate the damage otherwise expected from a submarine blowout resulting from a drilling catastrophe such as occurred with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and other offshore blowouts.

The first line of defense is pouring drilling mud down the well. The second line is activating a blowout preventer, which for Shell Oil in the Arctic involves a double shear ram for redundancy. The third line defense is a capping stack such as was used to try to contain the Macondo Well blowout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. The fourth line is the containment dome. There is experience with such technology on the BP Macondo Well in 2010. That attempt failed ultimately because "methane gas escaping from the well would come into contact with cold sea water and form slushy hydrates, essentially clogging the cofferdam with hydrocarbon ice."

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Wikipedia