Offshore staff
(Alaska) - Shell is ready to start exploring the $44 million worth of leases that it acquired in the Beaufort Sea last year, as evidenced by its purchase of a drilling rig to probe the Arctic waters for crude.
Shell purchased the rigThe Kullu from Cyprus-based Seatankers Management Co. late last year. The rig had been mothballed since 1993, and now sits in a remote bay along Canada's Northwest Territories. Shell spokesman Cam Toohey said that Shell plans to refurbish the rig at its current location and then move it into the Beaufort Sea to drill on the company's leases.
The Kullu, named for the Eskimo word for thunder, is specially designed to work in ice-laden seas, and has a history of drilling in Alaska's Arctic waters.
Shell's purchase of the Beaufort leases last year marks the company's return to the region. Shell was a major explorer in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Cook Inlet in the 1980's and 1990's, but its unsuccessful attempts at finding large offshore discoveries forced it to pull out of Alaska by the late 1990's.
The half million acres include a single block known as Hammerhead off Point Thompson, 60 mi east of Prudhoe Bay, for which Shell paid $12 million. A drilling partnership including Shell struck oil there in 1985, but Hammerhead was never developed, even though it was estimated to hold up to 200 MMbbl of oil.
The soonest that drilling could begin would be the summer of 2007, Toohey said.
03/07/2006
