Repair Experts Pour Over Shell Rig, Results Critical to Planning

摘要

For officials at Royal Dutch Shell, it would seem that nature and man are conspiring together against their plans to eventually drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Alaska. After spending almost $5 billion on the effort since 2005, half of Shell's Arctic drilling assets — the 29-year-old conical drilling barge Kulluk — is resting in Kiliuda Bay on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The rig was towed there after running aground Dec. 31 on Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island off the Alaskan coastline 30 miles from its present mooring (NGW Jan.14'13).