With pictures of Royal Dutch Shell's grounded Kulluk drilling rig off southern Alaska plastered across the news, the oil industry's offshore missteps have once again taken center stage. Although lacking the significance of BP's catastrophic blowout and oil spill in the US Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, images of the conical drilling unit harassed by thrashing waves nonetheless provided long-standing opponents of Arctic drilling ample ammunition. "[A]nother example of why drilling for oil in the Arctic is such a monumentally bad idea," reads a Greenpeace caption under a picture of the beached rig. The environmental advocacy group's US division has since made the fight against Arctic drilling its main battle front.
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