Active volcano may idle Inlet platforms until fall

Anchorage Daily News ^ | April 21st, 2009 09:08 PM | RICHARD MAUER

[thackney]

With Redoubt volcano still active and potentially explosive, officials have given up trying to restart the nearby Drift River oil terminal anytime soon, indefinitely idling about 10 oil platforms in Cook Inlet.

"It will take as long as Mother Nature decides," said a Coast Guard spokeswoman, Petty Officer Sara Francis. It's unlikely Drift River can reopen before early fall, she said.

The owner of the Chevron-operated facility, Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., is studying other ways of getting oil from the west side of Cook Inlet to market, Francis said. But so far, officials have not come up with a bypass plan, she said.

None of the production or pipeline employees have been furloughed yet, but contractors have been idled, according to Francis and Chevron spokeswoman Roxanne Sinz. Drift River employees have been working on other projects, Francis said. Chevron, which operates the platforms, is evaluating its workforce needs, Sinz said.

The state is losing about $45,000 a day in missed royalty payments.

The Drift River facility, a storage and transit way station between the offshore wells and refineries, was evacuated the day after Redoubt began its current eruption cycle March 22.

Thirty years ago, when Cook Inlet was in its prime and producing far more oil than could be consumed in Alaska, the facility sent oil as far away as Taiwan to be refined. Now all its crude travels to the Tesoro refinery in Nikiski, just a few miles by boat.

[thackney]

The lava dome on Redoubt Volcano is active lava dome. The photograph of the top of the mountain was taken from the north by AVO's Game McGimsey. The bottom image shows the thermal image - the darker colors represent cool / cold material and as the colors get lighter, they represent the progressively hotter material - the white being the hottest. The thermal image is by Rick Wessels. The images were made on April 16, 2009.

[thackney]

On April 4, 2009, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite captured this image of the Drift River Valley where it connects with Cook Inlet. Lahars have stained the river valley a deep muddy brown. Water channels form branching patterns just west of the Cook Inlet shore, and the dark brown color of each water channel contrasts sharply with the nearby snow. The Drift River Oil Terminal resides in this network of channels, and part of the facility appears as an off-white rectangle in a landscape of meandering mudflows.

[thackney]

Video: Google Earth simulated flyover
http://community.adn.com/mini_apps/vmix/player.php?GID=118&GENRES=00005449&ID=3696825