U.S. Congress wants probe of Shell’s Arctic drilling

Members of Congress are calling for an investigation of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s Arctic offshore drilling operations as salvagers looked for a way to retrieve a company drill ship that ran aground off an Alaska island during a fierce year-end storm.

For years, environmentalists have said conditions are too harsh and the stakes too high to allow industrial development in the Arctic, where drilling sites are 1,600 kilometres or more from the closest U.S. Coast Guard base.

The House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition called on the Interior Department and the Coast Guard on Thursday to jointly inves- tigate the New Year’s Eve grounding of the Shell drilling vessel Kulluk on a remote Gulf of Alaska island, and a previous incident connected to Arctic offshore drilling operations in 2012.

“The recent grounding of Shell’s Kulluk oil rig amplifies the risks of drilling in the Arctic,” the coalition of Democrats said in a joint statement.

“This is the latest in a series of alarming blunders, including the near-grounding of another of Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs, the 47-year-old Noble Discoverer, in Dutch Harbor and the failure of its blowout containment dome, the Arctic Challenger, in lake-like conditions.”

The coalition believes these “serious incidents” warrant thorough investigation, the statement said.