Shell betting billions on Alaska drilling!!!

skookerasbil

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Why Shell is betting billions to drill for oil in Alaska
May 24, 2012: 9:19 AM ET

This summer, the energy giant will begin exploring off the icy coast of Alaska -- after years of resistance by environmentalists. The payoff could be the largest U.S. offshore oil discovery in a generation.

By Jon Birger, contributor



FORTUNE -- Pete Slaiby is eating breakfast with an Eskimo businessman at a Mexican restaurant across the street from the Arctic Ocean when two Coast Guard admirals happen to walk in. It's 8 a.m. on a Tuesday in late March. Outside the temperature is an extremity-tingling, -35° F. Look 100 yards north, and it's not at all clear where the snow-covered land ends and the ice-covered ocean begins. Slaiby, Royal Dutch Shell's vice president for Alaska, rises to give the Coast Guard brass a warm welcome before they grab a nearby table. "Welcome to Barrow," he says wryly as he sits back down to his plate of huevos and reindeer sausage.

Indeed, it's a typical morning at Pepe's, a hole-in-the-wall eatery in Barrow, Alaska, population 4,300, the northernmost municipality in the United States. Everyone is there for the same reason. And with apologies to Pepe's colorful longtime proprietor Fran Tate -- whose claim to fame is presenting Johnny Carson with an oosik, a walrus penis bone, during a 1984 appearance on The Tonight Show -- it's not the cuisine. They've all come to Barrow because some 100 miles offshore, in the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi and Beaufort seas, lies what U.S. government geologists believe is 27 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Slaiby wants Shell (RDSA) to be the first company to get that oil out of the seabed. The Eskimo is a subcontractor who wants a piece of Shell's business. And the admirals want to ensure that a drilling accident doesn't happen in an ocean ecosystem that environmentalists consider to be one of the most unspoiled on the planet.

Alaska's outer-continental shelf has been off limits to oil companies -- despite the fact that Shell paid the U.S. government $2.2 billion for drilling rights back in 2005 and 2008. But that's about to change. After years of lawsuits, regulatory hitches, and other delays, Shell will finally sink its first exploratory wells in July, making this the first new offshore drilling project approved by the government since the 2010 BP (BP) disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Come fall, the big news out of Barrow may well be America's largest offshore oil discovery in a generation. "We can't know," says Slaiby, "until we start drilling."

The stakes are huge -- for Shell, for the environment, for the oil industry, and for the oil-addicted U.S. economy. The fact is, oil demand is soaring. Worldwide oil consumption is now running at 89 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. Not only is that up 6% from the lows of the recession -- a big increase given tight supplies -- but it's also above the pre-recession peak of 87 million barrels notched in 2008.


Why Shell is betting billions to drill for oil in Alaska - Fortune Features





Its known as "Realville" s0ns!!!!!:coffee::coffee::coffee:





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Yup. And they will charge much more for the oil because of the increased cost of operation in that climate. Add that to the increasing world wide demand, and the EV's will continue to look better to more people. As the battery technology advances, and the cost of home generated electricity decreases, the EV's will increase in the same manner as the hybrids have in the last decade.
 
Yup. And they will charge much more for the oil because of the increased cost of operation in that climate. Add that to the increasing world wide demand, and the EV's will continue to look better to more people. As the battery technology advances, and the cost of home generated electricity decreases, the EV's will increase in the same manner as the hybrids have in the last decade.

Those in the oil business are price takers, not price makers. Shell is taking on a monumental risk, a concept that is foreign to such markets as EV's and solar.
 
Granny says, "Dat's right - get used to it...

Shell President: ‘Oil Will be Required For a Long Time’
September 02, 2015 — The president of Shell Oil Co. said exploratory drilling off Alaska's northwest coast is going well despite stormy weather last week that caused the company to halt operations for a few days. And in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Marvin Odum said he expects further protests against the company's plans for Arctic drilling like the ones in Seattle and Portland where activists in kayaks tried to block Shell vessels.
Arctic offshore drilling is bitterly opposed by environmental groups, which say a spill cannot be cleaned in ice-choked waters and that industrial activity will harm polar bears, walrus and ice seals already harmed by diminished sea ice. In Seattle, Shell faced protests on the water by “kayaktivists” upset over the company staging equipment in the city. In Portland, Oregon, Greenpeace USA protesters hung from the St. Johns Bridge to delay a Shell support vessel, from heading to the Arctic. “I think the right assumptions for me to make are, it's not going to go away,” Odum said. “We saw quite a bit of very public opposition when we were in the Pacific Northwest.”

Odum said he's “110 percent ready” to work with people who want to find ways to improve drilling. “I do have an issue with those that oppose who use illegal means or put the safety of themselves or the safety of anybody associated with this operation at risk,” he said. Odum said good progress is being made on the first well off Alaska's northwest coast. “We had a few days in the last week where we couldn't operate because of the weather,” he said. “Now we're coming out of that and it looks like we're moving into a time period of good weather.” President Barack Obama this week is in Alaska rallying support for measures to combat climate change, such as limits on carbon emissions.

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A Shell Oil Company drilling rig is shown in Port Angeles, Washington.

Odum is staying in the same hotel as the president - the Hotel Captain Cook. While environmentalists praise the president for curbing greenhouse gases, they pillory him for granting Shell permission to drill in the Chukchi Sea for the first time in 24 years. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Chukchi and Beaufort seas hold 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Oil will continue to be needed as the United States transitions to more renewable energy, Odum said. “Oil will be required for a long time,” Odum said. “Let's take a really close look at developing our own resources, control how it's done and get all the benefits that go along with it.” Shell in two years of exploratory drilling and with up to six wells hopes to confirm a vast reservoir of oil. If it's found, Shell could apply for production permits and move oil by undersea pipe to the Alaska shore and then overland across northern Alaska to the trans-Alaska pipeline. That could take more than a decade.

Odum is confident exploration can be done safely, and the overriding factor dictating whether Shell completes an exploratory well this year will be safety. Shell is operating under strict Arctic rules put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Arctic offshore drilling has been scrutinized in the courts in lawsuits brought by drilling opponents, Odum said. “It's probably fair to say, this is the most scrutinized, analyzed project - oil and gas project - probably anywhere in the world. I'm actually sure of that,” he said. All the scrutiny, along with Shell's own internal review, have gone into safety considerations. It's in the company's best interest, he said. “We can't afford to have a problem here,” Odum said.

Shell President: ‘Oil Will be Required For a Long Time’
 

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