Shell watching Chukchi ice situation

Shell is continuing to monitor the sea ice cover in the Chukchi Sea, as the company waits to decide when to start moving its drilling vessels north from Seattle for this year’s planned Arctic drilling program.

“The ice coverage is more substantial than it has been,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Petroleum News in a June 4 email. “As a result, we expect that our planned drilling activities in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas will be slightly delayed. It’s hard to say for how long or when our vessels will leave Seattle.”

If ice persists over Shell’s planned drilling sites the company will wait for the ice to clear, rather than use its ice-capable vessels to force their way through the sea ice, Smith said.

A recent Arctic sea-ice map constructed from satellite data shows sea ice in the northern Chukchi Sea and extending south, offshore the Alaska Chukchi Sea coast.

—Alan Bailey