On Wednesday night, a large red drill ship left the Port of Dutch Harbor for the Chukchi Sea. The Fugro Synergy won’t be doing any sort of Arctic drilling, of course, but the vessel will be laying the groundwork for future energy extraction.

Marshall Pounds is the general manager of the Texas-based Fugro Drilling and Well Services. He says that the Synergy will be collecting very shallow geologic core samples up north on behalf of an unnamed operator that hopes to pursue a drilling program eventually. He says that these cores will be collected at depth of about 30 to 50 meters, and that the Synergy will be focusing on an area about 150 miles away from Wainwright. The project should take about three weeks, depending on ice and weather conditions, and Pounds says that the Synergy should be back in Unalaska in about 35 days from now.

Meanwhile, a different Fugro vessel has been doing surveying work in the Aleutians on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Fugro Pelagos has been collecting bathymetry data around Akutan and Akun Islands, and that data will be used to update NOAA’s nautical charts in the region.