EVERETT -- Despite protests from environmentalists and Seattle city leaders, Royal Dutch Shell is still planning to move its Arctic oil drilling rigs to a Seattle port terminal. One oil rig, the Noble Discoverer, docked in the Port of Everett Tuesday night.
[pdf] That’s what’s unfolding this week in Alaska, where a Shell drilling rig called the Kulluk broke free from a tow ship in stormy seas on New Year’s Eve before running aground on the southeast coast of Sitkalidak Island, near the larger island of Kodiak.
[pdf] Kulluk was an ice-strengthened that was used for oil exploration in the Arctic waters. She was constructed by in in 1983 and operated in the Canadian Arctic until 1993 when she was mothballed for over a decade. In 2005, she was purchased and extensively refurbished by Shell PLC for drilling off the .
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