The Coast Guard is gearing up for a busy Arctic drilling season this summer – and for the protesters that are expected to accompany it. 

The Coast Guard will send its newest national security cutter – the 420 foot Bertholf – to the Arctic for this summer’s open water season.  That’s in addition to a buoy tender and two helicopters. The Guard is preparing for more traffic and anticipated offshore oil drilling through their Arctic Shield effort.    If Shell moves ahead with exploratory drilling this summer, the company expects to have 22 vessels in the region and 6 aircraft. They plan fly more than 300 trips from land to the drilling rigs to ferry 400 employees around. 

Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo, the commander of Alaska’s Coast Guard District, was in Nome Wednesday to speak with native corporation and city leaders.  

 “When you have this much activity going on, there’s always the possibility of collisions, collisions, groundings, helicopter mishaps - aircraft going into Barrow at three times the normal rate to bring all these people up there – one of them has a mishap.  The Coast Guard is going to be there to do all the missions.  Eleven statutory missions on the North Slope, which heretofore we haven’t done much of.  So, we’re looking to take our normal mission set and take it to an area of the nation where in the past we haven’t been.”

The Coast Guard is adding a temporary air base and communication station in Barrow.  They also plan to do their first ever oil spill response drill in arctic waters. No oil will be spilled, but they will test their ability to deploy and operate skimming equipment.

Traffic through the Bering Strait is again expected to break records with upwards of 1000 vessels transiting the strait.  Ostebo says in preparing for Shell’s drilling program, people should step back and take a holistic view of growth in the arctic. Ostebo points to massive Russian tankers carrying Norwegian gas condensate that made it through the strait this past summer.

“The US really has no control over that.  That’s foreign-flagged vessels operating between two sovereign nations going to a third nation to deliver it.  My point is that there’s a lot of activity going on and that the United States is just now I think beginning to realize, quite frankly, how much of that activity is going on in our own backyard.  And we’re also realizing that we don’t have full control over that.  A lot of times we like to think that we’re managing all this and we’re in charge.  We’re not.”

Ostebo says the country should be looking at ways to organize vessel traffic lanes and improve communication among those navigating through the area.

Arctic drilling also has the attention of Greenpeace and other environmental organizations, with Greenpeace members last week boarding the Alaska-bound Discoverer Drill rig in New Zealand.  Ostebo says on site safety and security, plus keeping the Port of Dutch Harbor open will be critical missions.

“We are prepared for very well-supplied and logistically supported protesters.  We saw that off of Greenland last year.  They had large ships, 200 foot ships and protestors coming off of those so we have to be prepared for that as well.

Shell is planning to use Unalaska as its logistics hub for the drilling season, although the company still needs to secure several individual well permits order to go ahead with this summer’s program. If Shell is successful, Conoco Phillips and Statoil hope to drill in the next two summers.

Reporting by Ben Matheson of KNOM in Nome