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’ Alaska division said by email the pause will allow time “to revalidate potential project economic benefits and justification.”
The pause comes one month after Royal Dutch Shell announced it is abandoning a multibillion-dollar effort to explore Alaska’s Arctic offshore waters for oil, and weeks after the Obama administration announced a curtailment of Arctic oil drilling leases.
The Corps’ 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.
“The 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,” the Corps said Monday in an announcement.
In February, the draft final report concluded that the most sensible option to support oil and gas drilling — as well as other Arctic traffic — was to deepen Nome’s port and construct a breakwater long enough.
“Increased deep-draft vessel traffic in the Arctic, coupled with limited marine infrastructure along Alaska’s western and northern shores, poses risks for accidents and incidents and increases response times for search and rescue operations,” the draft report states.
Shell’s 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.
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.
“Typically, a study found to be not economically justified would be terminated,” the Corps stated in a letter Monday, “however, 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.”
In the next year, the Corps said it expects to study whether existing Arctic needs — including search and rescue — and shipping without oil drilling create sufficient demand for a new port.
