Shell Oil Begins Drilling Off The Alaskan Coast Shell paid $2.8
billion for petroleum leases from the government four years ago
but has been blocked from drillling by environmental lawsuits.
Federal officials estimate the Chukchi and nearby Beaufort seas
contain 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas, a sizeable portion of the 90 million
barrels of oil which are estimated to lie under the Arctic Sea
floor. The Department of the Interior announced at the end of
August that Shell would be permitted to begin prepartory
drilling despite the fact that the company's spill response
barge remains to be certified and is currently off the coast of
Washington state. From AP: Drilling is bitterly opposed by
environmental groups that say oil companies have not
demonstrated they can clean up a spill in ice-choked water. They
say a spill of the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in
the Gulf of Mexico would be catastrophic in a region hammered by
climate warming and home to e