September 10th, 2010

Continued uneasiness about the safety of offshore oil drilling may lead to delays in Royal Dutch Shell’s plans to proceed with five planned wells in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

“We will be making that decision in the several months ahead,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at an Anchorage news conference, citing pending reports on offshore drilling safety and the results of an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The review process could thwart Shell’s plans to prepare a drilling program for the brief 2011 open-water season.

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