Shell on verge of new drill campaign

Drillship Noble Discoverer (front) and the ice-class drilling barge Kulluk (back) undergo final preparations to leave for the US Arctic in June.

Ready: Drillship Noble Discoverer (front) and the ice-class drilling barge Kulluk (back) undergo final preparations to leave for the US Arctic in June.

SHELL

By BLAKE WRIGHT Houston

 26 April 2012 22:59 GMT

ANGLO-DUTCH supermajor Shell is on the verge of launching an ambitious drilling campaign that has been more than a decade in the making when it returns to the offshore US Arctic.

Shell has already invested close to $4 billion in this exploration programme, purchasing leases and completing preparatory work including comprehensive mitigation and safety measures.

Beset by problems — chiefly regulatory and environmental — the company is closing in on its first open-water spud in the region in over 20 years.

The path back to the Arctic became harder after BP’s 2010 Macondo disaster in the deep-water US Gulf. The BP well gushed uncontrolled for 87 days, spewing more than four million barrels of crude into the sea.



Answers “Shell was very close…

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