After a seven-month-long stay at the Homer harbor, Buccaneer Energy’s jack-up rig Endeavor left Kachemak Bay Friday morning. The company plans for the rig to drill in the Cosmopolitan Unit near Anchor Point.
The City of Homer asked Buccaneer to move the rig to make way for a fender replacement project at the harbor’s Deepwater Dock, where the rig has been moored since last August.
Homer Harbormaster Bryan Hawkins says the materials for the fender replacement have arrived from Seward and are in place on the dock. Jay Brant Construction of Homer is the contractor in charge of the project, which is expected to take about a month to complete.
The Endeavor was given a Certificate of Compliance by the U.S. Coast Guard over the weekend.
Another Cook Inlet jack-up rig, Furie Operating Alaska’s “Spartan 151,” received the same certificate Tuesday from the dock in Port Graham.
The examinations included verification of the rigs’ documentation, safety equipment, machinery installations and watching crew perform fire and abandon ship drills. Coast Guard Inspector Jay Jerome says certificates of compliance are issued to all offshore drilling units before they can get to work.
Calls and emails to Buccaneer representative Jay Morakis were not returned in time for this story. In a news release earlier this month, Morakis said the Endeavour had also received permitting approval from the American Bureau of Shipping to move to the Cosmopolitan Unit.
Before the Endeavor can drill at Cosmo, however, it still must receive approval from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.