July 18th, 2015:
THEIR ROYAL HEILNESSES
Shell Rigs Leave Dutch for Chukchi, To Wait
By Liz Ruskin, APRN | July 17, 2015
Shell is still moving its ships and equipment into the Arctic, even as one of its icebreakers prepares to head back south for repairs. The unexpected crack in the hull of the ship called the Fennica has added a measure of uncertainty to the start of the short Arctic drilling season.
This week both of Shell’s Arctic drill rigs, the Noble Discoverer and the Polar Pioneer, left Dutch Harbor to begin the thousand-mile trip to the Chukchi Sea. Shell Spokeswoman Megan Baldino says the plan, for now, is to get there and wait.
Shell-contracted drillship begins final Arctic journey
Jul 17 2015, 16:39 ET | By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) still does not have the final permits it needs to begin boring an exploratory oil well in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska, but today’s sendoff of the Noble Discoverer drilling rig suggests the company’s confidence that those authorizations are on the horizon.
While the Discoverer could arrive at Shell’s Burger prospect in less than a week, a second Shell-contracted drilling rig, the Transocean Polar Pioneer, is still in port ~1,200 miles away from Shell’s planned oil wells.