For the past month, Shell has been drilling topholes in the Chukchi Sea. Now, they're doing preparatory work in the Beaufort, too.
The drill rig Kulluk went into action this afternoon and will spend the rest of the month developing two 1,500-foot casings in the Beaufort. Shell plans to extend those topholes down into hydrocarbon layers next summer.
Shell has only until the end of October to do its preparatory work in the Arctic. While Shell had hoped to complete several exploratory wells this year, the company experienced a series of setbacks including permitting problems, construction delays, and aggressive sea ice. In the Beaufort, Shell also had to wait on the subsistence whaling season to wrap up. Kaktovik's whale hunt ended just this week.
Voter turnout dropped sharply in this year’s municipal election.
A total of 110 ballots were cast yesterday. In 2011, 475 people came out to vote in the municipal election, and over 500 ballots were submitted the year before that.
City Clerk Elizabeth Masoni says it’s the smallest voter turnout she’s seen in her dozen years working at City Hall.
"This concerns me," says Masoni. "I feel very strongly that we have a responsibility to vote."
A jury has found former fish processing workers Ismael Balallo and Diego Mayuyo guilty of sexual assault. The two men stood accused of forcing themselves on a woman in her Unisea bunkhouse in March.
Balallo was found guilty of sexual assault in the first degree for penetrating the woman without her consent. He was also found guilty of sexual assault in the second degree for engaging in sexual contact without her consent.
According to the Unalaska Department of Public Safety, a counterfeit $100 bill turned up in a bank deposit on Monday. Officers concluded that the bill had been used at the Harbor View Bar and Grill, and that it had been mixed in with employee tips.
Sgt. Jennifer Shockley says that it seems to be an isolated case.
“We haven’t had anything that seems to indicate that there’s somebody bringing up or even producing here large quantities of counterfeit bills,” says Shockley. To me it seems far more likely that somebody gets a hold of one, whether it’s on purpose or by accident, and literally passes the buck.”
Three Raider runners competed in the state championship held in Anchorage this weekend.
Eighteen cross-country teams participated, and they came from Barrow, Seward, and everywhere in between. The race pits runners from Division 1, 2, and 3A schools against each other on a 5,000-meter course.
Freshman Kiana Lopez represented the Lady Raiders in the snowy and muddy race. She finished 74th out of 112 runners, with a time of 25 minutes and 3 seconds.
Jurors began weighing the evidence today in the trial of two men accused of sexual assault.
Ismael Balallo and Diego Mayuyo are each charged with multiple counts of sexual assault for allegedly attacking a woman in her Unisea bunkhouse in March.
The trial lasted two days, with jurors hearing testimony from the alleged victim, healthcare providers, and the arresting officer, among others. The defendants elected not to testify.
Back in June, a tiny harbor seal, barely a week old, was found near a seafood processing plant in Unalaska. The pup was scrawny, and she had clearly been attacked by another animal.
“With the condition that she was in, being skinny, having all those puncture wounds, she would not have lasted more than a couple more days,” says Tim Lebling, the stranding coordinator with the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.
Last winter, Nome made national news when thick sea ice put it at risk of running out of fuel. Now, the island community of St. George has quietly avoided the same fate.
This time, the problem wasn’t caused by extreme weather but economics.
With fuel stores dwindling and temperatures already dropping below freezing, St. George spent last week anxiously awaiting a resolution to a potential energy crisis. The city’s supplier, Delta Western, had reached the end of a 20-year agreement with village Native corporation Tanaq to deliver fuel to the remote island, and it was unclear how residents were going to heat and power their homes.
A magnitude 6.9 6.4* earthquake struck near Adak Wednesday afternoon. City manager Layton Lockett says it felt like the earth was moving in circles underneath him.
“Middle of the day, everybody’s working and all of sudden it just hit. And it was long. It wasn’t a short earthquake, I want to say it was around 15-20 seconds.”
