Federal regulators allowed the company to start drilling in two locations, but made it stop short of going deep enough to reach oil or gas, because all the spill-prevention equipment the company had promised wasn’t yet on site. But after the floating drill rig Kulluk snapped free of its tow and grounded in a New Year’s Eve storm in the Gulf of Alaska enroute to Seattle, Shell put Arctic drilling on hold for the summer season of 2013. With its drill rigs sent to Asia for repairs, Shell hasn’t said if, or when, it’s coming back to finish the job. Shell has already spent more than $5 billion on its endeavor.
Alex DeMarban: October 12, 2013
An impoverished group of Northwest Alaska villages whose residents hunt walrus and seals to survive have banded together to form a corporation to capitalize on an economic boom on the U.S. side of the Arctic, should that day ever come.Most importantly, the fledgling Bering Sea Alliance wants villagers involved in whatever development occurs so it’s done responsibly. That includes being trained to respond to a spill, an increasing possibility with growing numbers of freighters steaming through the
50-mile-wide Bering Strait [3], gateway to the Arctic Ocean that the seven villages call home.”We wanted to leave nothing to chance as it related to the resources our villages depend on,” said Art Ivanoff of Unalakleet, the company’s chief executive and its only employee at the moment. “It’s marine life that sustains our villages and we’re trying to find a way to have the tools in the toolbox to respond to an incident if one were to occur.”
Hazardous materials workshop
The alliance has been pushing aggressively to let oil companies as well as state and federal agencies know it’s available to provide such things as emergency response services or manpower for a cleanup, he said.The group’s efforts will bear their first fruit early next week. Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sponsor a hazardous materials training workshop in Wales for 12 to 24 residents living in that village at the tip of the Bering Strait [4], said Ivanoff.The Netherlands-based oil giant is also interested in providing the training in the six other villages that, along with Wales, launched the alliance in August, Ivanoff said.Shell’s decision to pay for the three-day training could be a hopeful sign for Alaskans worried that the company will abandon the exploratory drilling they started in summer 2012, when Shell became the first company in two decades to punch into the U.S. Arctic Ocean seafloor.Federal regulators allowed the company to start drilling in two locations, but made it stop short of going deep enough to reach oil or gas, because all the spill-prevention equipment the company had promised wasn’t yet on site.But after the floating drill rig Kulluk snapped free of its tow and grounded in a New Year’s Eve storm in the Gulf of Alaska enroute to Seattle [5], Shell put Arctic drilling on hold for the summer season of 2013. With its drill rigs sent to Asia for repairs, Shell hasn’t said if, or when, it’s coming back to finish the job. read more
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The revised licence for the operation of the Shell gas terminal at Ballinaboy, Co Mayo, has been quashed by the Commercial Court. In a setback for the Shell Corrib gas pipeline project…
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