- Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDS.A, RDS.B) campaign to resume Arctic drilling in 2015 takes a major step forward, as it gives federal regulators a broad drilling blueprint that lays out plans for boring new exploratory oil wells in the Chukchi Sea.
- The exploration plan filed with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in Anchorage keeps the door open for Shell to resume its Arctic drilling campaign as soon as summer 2015, and is the strongest evidence yet that new CEO Ben van Beurden wants to keep pursuing a big discovery in the U.S. Arctic after an ill-fated exploration campaign in 2012.
- The newly submitted exploration plan outlines ambitions to drill up to six wells over several years.