Shell’s drilling programme in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas is a bellwether for arctic offshore exploration. Its experience will be used as evidence for or against drilling in the harsh, environmentally sensitive waters of the far north. A series of arctic exploration setbacks for Shell, punctuated by the grounding of its Kulluk drillship on an island in the Gulf of Alaska on the final night of 2012, is giving industry opponents the upper hand in the argument over drilling in the Arctic. Critics such as US congressman Edward Markey can reasonably argue that the Kulluk episode and other incidents show that oil companies cannot drill safely in the forbidding conditions of the Arctic.
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