What was that big thing in Elliott Bay?
Jul 19, 2011, 7:00 PM
It’s not every day you see an offshore oil drilling platform near Seattle.
It’s so rare that a top trending Seattle Twitter topic was asking about the “big thing” in Elliott Bay. The offshore oil drilling unit, the Kulluk, was making its way to the Vigor Shipyards (formerly Todd Shipyards) Tuesday. Shell is getting it ready for off shore drilling experiments off the coast of Alaska in 2012. The Kulluk came all the way from Dutch Harbor, Alaska for upgrades in Seattle.
This photo is by Matthew Jones, a marine estimator for a ship builder in Seattle, who shared this shot with me via Twitter. In the background you can also see the white-globe Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) wish is also at the shipyard on Harbor Island for three months of work. It arrived here in May, so they should be almost finished with upgrades on the SBX.