Shell halts drilling in the Arctic

Royal Dutch Shell announced on Tuesday it has halted drilling operations off Alaska because floating ice is drifting too close to its drilling platform.


Shell is carrying out test drilling for oil in the ocean off Alaska, the first time in over twenty years oil exploration has been carried out in the region.
The floating ice mass is 48 kilometres by 19 kilometres big and is moving in the direction of the Shell platform. The company expects it to move far enough away to resume drilling in two or three days.
Shell paid the US government over €2bn for the rights to test drill in the Arctic waters. Environmental organisations such as Greenpeace are against the project, saying Shell has not shown that an oil leak can be stopped and cleaned up quickly enough.
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