The headline in the Los Angeles Times says it all: Salazar on Arctic drilling: 'Shell screwed up in 2012'. The story tells us what we already know. Royal Dutch Shell fought for approval to drill off the Alaska coast, promising to take every precaution in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. Mishap then followed mishap. Probably the only reason there was not oil all over the Arctic was that they never managed to finish drilling a well.
Interior Secretary Salazar's comments are instructive.
“Shell screwed up in 2012, and we’re not going to let them screw up whenever they [resume] … unless they have these systems in place,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said after a new report found that Shell’s contractors were repeatedly ill-prepared to meet the demands of operating in the harsh Arctic environment.One has to wonder why Shell was allowed to proceed with drilling in 2012 if these fail-safe systems were not already in place. Salazar's comments suggest that Shell had a plan but its wild and crazy contractors did not follow it. Theoretically, BP had a plan to cap a well leak in 5000 feet of warm water, but I digress.“Before Shell is allowed to move forward, they’re going to have to show to the Department of Interior that they have met the standards that have been required,” Salazar said.
The story goes on to say that the only thing Shell did right was forecast dangerous ice floe development. Shell (or their contractors) did nearly everything else wrong. Fascinating.