The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday it is halting, for 12 months, work on a deepwater port in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
The Corps\u2019 Alaska division said by email the pause will allow time \u201cto revalidate potential project economic benefits and justification.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pause comes one month after Royal Dutch Shell announced it is abandoning a multibillion-dollar effort to explore Alaska\u2019s Arctic offshore waters for oil, and weeks after the Obama administration announced a curtailment of Arctic oil drilling leases.<\/p>\n
The Corps\u2019 port study began in December 2011 in cooperation with the state of Alaska. Its stated goal was to find or develop a port capable of supporting Arctic drilling operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bulk of benefits used to justify the Port of Nome expansion in the study are related to travel cost savings for oil and gas support vessels for activities in the Chukchi Sea,\u201d the Corps said Monday in an announcement.<\/p>\n
In February, the draft final report concluded that the most sensible option to support oil and gas drilling \u2014 as well as other Arctic traffic \u2014 was to deepen Nome\u2019s port and construct a breakwater long enough. <\/p>\n
\u201cIncreased deep-draft vessel traffic in the Arctic, coupled with limited marine infrastructure along Alaska\u2019s western and northern shores, poses risks for accidents and incidents and increases response times for search and rescue operations,\u201d the draft report states.<\/p>\n
Shell\u2019s offshore drilling was staged from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, 1,000 miles south of the Chukchi Sea. Nome is 200 miles south of the Chukchi.<\/p>\n
While Port Clarence, northwest of Nome, offers a sheltered harbor, it lacks port facilities. Nome offered an opportunity for a closer harbor with basic facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, a study found to be not economically justified would be terminated,\u201d the Corps stated in a letter Monday, \u201chowever, because of the dynamic nature of the oil and gas industry and the strong interest in enhanced Arctic marine infrastructure, the Corps and its partners have decided to pause the study, rather than terminate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the next year, the Corps said it expects to study whether existing Arctic needs \u2014 including search and rescue \u2014 and shipping without oil drilling create sufficient demand for a new port.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday it is halting, for 12 months, work on a deepwater port in the Arctic. The Corps\u2019 Alaska division said by email the pause will allow time \u201cto revalidate potential project economic benefits and justification.\u201d The pause comes one month after Royal Dutch Shell announced it is abandoning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33003"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}