Photos by U.S. Coast Guard and Stephen Nowers

Fire & Ice: How the Gulf spill jeopardized offshore oil in Alaska

---

Part I: Will the Gulf oil spill slow offshore plans in Alaska's Arctic?

Part II: Shell and BP's hunt for offshore oil in Alaska

Part III: Déjà vu all over again

---

Nearly three weeks after new federal offshore drilling permits were put on hold, President Obama's administration is preparing to announce Thursday that a hold will be put on any new drilling until 2011, according to a statement by U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

Royal Dutch Shell had hoped to drill five exploratory wells this summer in the Arctic Ocean, targeting fields in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. While Begich apparently received a heads-up about the decision, Shell hadn't heard anything beyond the Alaska senator's press release and media reports, said Shell spokesman Phil Dyer, who was reached by phone late Wednesday.

"Until we've actually seen Secretary Salazar's announcement, we're holding off on the comments." Dyer said.

In a statement Wednesday evening, Begich said, "I am frustrated that this decision by the Obama Administration to halt offshore development for a year will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation's energy needs."

"Another year of delay costs money and Alaska jobs," he added. "The nation also has to export more dollars and import more oil from some unfriendly places, jeopardizing our economic and national security."

On May 6, the cautionary wrath of deeply angered and intensely wary federal regulators hit Shell hard, when Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar placed on hold new and pending permits for drilling in federal waters. One company's disastrous mishap in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico -- BP's uncontrollable gusher -- had suddenly become Shell's nightmare.

Environmentalists, along with some village residents along the arctic coast, urged Salazar to halt offshore drilling in the Arctic this summer, arguing oil exploration off of Alaska's northern shores is flirting with catastrophe. The area, home to several species of endangered and threatened marine life and animals, is too fragile, too important ecologically and culturally to risk the consequences of a spill, and its harsh weather and icy seas can't be adequately overcome to contain or clean up a spill, they argue.

Other North Slope residents have been supportive of Shell's plans. Native corporations were hoping to contract with Shell and help with its drilling operations, and it was after a day spent in Barrow meeting with some of those very stakeholders that Dyer, en route back to Anchorage, caught word of the impending no-drill decision.