Request to Salazar for hold on drilling

A group of environmental organizations has asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to reconsider approval of Shell’s plans to drill exploration wells in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas in 2010, pending an investigation into the cause of the oil rig explosion and ensuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“If a similar blowout occurred in remote Arctic water, in mixed ice and harsh weather conditions, effective response would be impossible,” said Audubon Alaska, Oceana, Ocean Conservancy and the Pew Environment Group, in a May 5 letter to Secretary Salazar. “The oil industry’s repeated public assurances regarding response capabilities in the Arctic simply do not withstand serious scrutiny.”

Shell, having assembled a major spill response fleet in support of its planned drilling, remains confident of its ability to conduct its offshore operations safely. The company has said that its state-of-the-art well planning and drilling techniques make a drilling accident an extremely unlikely possibility.

“We will continue planning to drill in 2010 unless we are told we should not. We would not consider undertaking such an endeavor without the full confidence that we can operate in the Alaska OCS safely and responsibly,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Petroleum News May 5. “… We plan to bring the same best practices to our Alaska program that have made Shell an offshore leader throughout the world, including in the Arctic. Recent events in the Gulf of Mexico have given us reason to pause, double check and triple check what we already believe is a robust drilling program to see if it can be made even better.”

—Alan Bailey