Shell Offshore Inc. has applied for a federal permit to drill a single well in the Beaufort Sea next year, but won't move ahead with exploration plans in the Chukchi Sea until legal issues are resolved, the company's Alaska vice president said Wednesday.

Pete Slaiby, Shell Alaska vice president, called the Beaufort "an easier path forward" given legal challenges brought by environmental groups against the federal government's lease sale and permitting programs in the Chukchi Sea.

But the path may still be blocked with the usual political and regulatory icebergs. Environmental attorneys on Wednesday immediately raised concerns about Shell's ability to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic and indicated legal action would again be likely if the federal government approves the Shell permit.

And the Shell announcement came on the same day the presidential commission examining BP's Gulf of Mexico spill released a draft report on "The Challenges of Oil Spill Response in the Arctic" that questions the adequacy of Shell's oil spill contingency plan for the Arctic.

Slaiby said the company already has an approved exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea area, which was recently upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Shell feels more comfortable spending money on a drilling program in the Beaufort than it does in the Chukchi, and Slaiby said the company may apply to drill a second well, depending on how things go with the first.

The company also unveiled plans for a new "oil spill containment system" that includes a containment dome similar to technology used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this summer, and said it has "designed and equipped the most robust oil spill response system in the Arctic known to the industry."

(Animation video courtesy of Shell Offshore Inc.) The company is committed to engineering "an oil spill containment system" that's "designed to capture hydrocarbons at the source in the extremely unlikely event of a shallow water blowout."

The "application for a permit to drill" (or APD, as it's commonly called) was filed Tuesday with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement and is for the Sivulliq prospect in the Camden Bay area, about 12 to 15 miles off the northern Alaska coast, just west of Kaktovik.

Parnell applauds Shell, but feds withhold judgment

Slaiby said the company estimates as many as 800 jobs are generated from a single rig, and the company's announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by Gov. Sean Parnell, who, along with U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, has been urging the federal government to allow Shell to move forward with its offshore drilling program.

"I commend Shell's persistence in pushing federal regulators to come down on the side of Americans who want an expansion of the jobs base and greater national security through increased domestic energy production," Parnell said in a press release.