Shell was outbid on 27 tracts other tracts.
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The area of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas surrounding Shell’s now-defunct Burger J exploration well could hold a few 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. “At least not now, not with Shell”.
Shell told investors it is already bracing for financial fallout from its Monday announcement, expecting a $4.1 billion hit on its balance sheets. In Anchorage alone, Shell employs about 800 including contracted office workers, and this decision will definitely impact future hiring.
The company has spent more than $7 billion on the effort, slogged through a regulatory gauntlet and fought environmental groups that feared a spill in the harsh climate would be hard to clean up and devastating to polar bears, walruses, seals and other wildlife. Up to 3,000 Shell contractors are working in the field at any given time. “That number fluctuates depending on where we are in the season”.
This is not the first bill Huffman has authored trying to protect the arctic as he also helped author the bi-partisan bill “Udall-Eisenhower Arctic Wilderness Act” which would protect over 1.5 million acres of coastal plain. A total of 140 companies and 767 Alaskans worked on the project then.
Shell, they said, had always been taking considerable risks by choosing to drill in a remote and unforgiving environment where costs and political pressure are high.
“Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S”, Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas, said in a statement.
She cited a loss of jobs as one of the biggest immediate effects in the state. “Any company leaving Alaska is disappointing”.
When Royal Dutch Shell announced late Sunday that it was suspending its Arctic drilling exploration, which was to be based out of Seattle, many analysts pointed to slumping oil prices as a driving culprit.
Instead, the Obama administration gave Shell the green light.
The president could take several steps to make Arctic oil exploration almost impossible for a very long time. Although their campaign to keep Shell out of Alaska was not successful, it was a large obstacle that may keep other oil companies at bay.
Shell had the strong backing of Alaska officials and business leaders who want a new source of crude oil filling the trans-Alaska pipeline, now running at less than one-quarter capacity.
The Senate version of the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act of 2015 was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on July 16, 2015.
Arctic Slope Regional Corp.’s president and CEO, Rex Rock Sr., shared those sentiments. “Absent any responsible resource development onshore and offshore, we are facing a fiscal crisis beyond measure”.
Shell’s London-listed shares moved up in early trading but later fell more than 2.8 percent. “And I don’t think that’s going away”.
The biannual conference opened today in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Carlson Center sports arena, where the heating hadn’t yet been turned on and where news of Shell’s withdrawal from Alaska’s Chukchi Sea was making waves.
Barrow Rep. Benjamin Nageak called the news “heartbreaking”.
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From the beginning I have said life as we know it depends on bold, immediate action, especially when a harbinger of catastrophic climate change is moored in our backyard.
