Exploratory oil drilling in Arctic halted until 2011

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Thursday will suspend planned exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2011, a casualty of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The suspension will be part of a report that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will give to President Obama, who's likely to address the suspension as well as other proposals stemming from Salazar's report, at a White House news conference Thursday.

The move will stop Shell from drilling five wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off northern Alaska weeks before it had hoped to start work, an administration official said. The move will stop for now a controversial expansion of oil drilling in a part of the world that could hold vast stores of oil and natural gas, but which environmentalists warn would come at great risk.

Despite a late appeal from Shell that it would employ new safety measures in the wake of the Gulf spill, Salazar was unconvinced that the exploratory drilling even in the much shallower waters of the Arctic would be safe.

Shell, which paid $2.1 billion in 2008 for the leases, had planned to start exploratory drilling in June or July.

The federal Minerals Management Service estimates that the two seas hold up to 19 billion barrels of oil and up to 74 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a combined resource comparable to the onshore fields of Alaska's North Slope.

In a post-Gulf spill pitch to keep its work on track, Shell stressed that the Arctic seas are shallower than the Gulf, that drilling wouldn't have to probe as far into the earth, and that the equipment wouldn't be under as much pressure — or risk of failure.

In the Chukchi Sea, Shell said, it would be drilling in 150 feet of water to a depth of 7,000 to 8,000 feet. In the Beaufort, which is also 150 feet deep, it would be drilling to a depth of 10,200 feet.

The Deepwater Horizon rig in the gulf was working through 5,000 feet of water, and then drilling to a depth of 18,000 feet.

Also

The trans-Alaska pipeline remained shut down Wednesday after several thousand barrels of crude oil spilled Tuesday during a scheduled pipeline shutdown at a pump station near Fort Greely, about 100 miles south of Fairbanks. A spill of that size would be one of the largest ever for the 33-year-old pipeline.