Shell: US Gulf Drilling Threatened by Environmental Lawsuits

摘要

The head of Royal Dutch Shell's US subsidiary warned last week that lawsuits filed by environmental groups could obstruct offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere by creating what he called a "backdoor moratorium" on offshore drilling. Shell was the first company to receive federal approval for a deepwater exploration plan in the US Gulf of Mexico after the government imposed a moratorium on deepwa-ter drilling in the wake of the BP blowout and oil spill last year (IOD Jun.9'11).