First vessel in Shell's Arctic drilling fleet heads for Alaska
Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters
SEATTLE (Reuters) - The first vessel in Royal Dutch Shell's Arctic drilling fleet has embarked from Washington state to Alaska ahead of its planned resumption of oil and gas exploration in the remote region this summer, the company said on Thursday.
The Arctic Challenger, an oil spill containment barge, had left Bellingham, north of Seattle, and was headed toward Dutch Harbor, in Unalaska, off mainland Alaska, Shell spokeswoman Megan Baldino said. She did not know when it would arrive.
The Arctic Challenger is one of about two dozen support vessels that will accompany drilling rigs slated to resume a search for fossil fuels as soon as next month in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, among the world's most ecologically sensitive regions.
Environmental groups contend that an oil spill in the area, which is covered by vast layers of sea ice and prone to rapid changes in weather conditions, would be destructive to the ecosystem and extremely hard to clean up.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/first-vessel-shells-arctic-drilling-fleet-heads-alaska-215748308--finance.html
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