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The Explorers 2009: Shell
Shell’s recent exploration history in Alaska is best measured in potential. Since returning to the state in 2005, lawsuits have kept the Dutch major from drilling, but it continues to refine its landholdings and pursue an exploration program on two fronts. Shell first arrived in Alaska in the 1950s, exploring the Alaska Peninsula and the North Slope. The company brought the Middle Ground Shoal field into production in Cook Inlet in the 1960s, but sold the field in 1998.
Shell returned to Alaska in 2005, picking up acreage in the Beaufort Sea, and later a few state leases on the Alaska Peninsula. But following legal challenges over its Beaufort Sea plans, Shell pared down its initial exploration program in the area to a one-year (instead of three-year), one-rig (instead of two-rig), two-well (instead of four-well) program planned for 2010. In early 2009 Shell gave up its Alaska Peninsula acreage.
In early 2008, Shell bid $2.1 billion for 275 blocks in the Chukchi Sea, including blocks where the company had drilled in 1989 and 1990. Shell plans to start drilling in some of that acreage in 2010.
Current exploration focus Northern Alaska — the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas outer continental shelf: planning to drill in the Sivulliq and Torpedo prospects on the west side of Camden Bay in the Beaufort Sea in 2010, and in the Burger, Crackerjack and Southwest Shoebill prospects in the Chukchi Sea, also in 2010.
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