In the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the subsequent US drilling embargo, the approval of Shell’s drilling operations off the Alaskan coast received considerable media attention. However, this year’s planned drilling of three wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort Sea was first reduced to one well and then postponed until next year after a containment dome – an emergency device for stopping a blowout – was damaged.