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July 5, 2012

Shell assembling spill response gear to prepare for Arctic drilling

By DAN JOLING
Associated Press

ANCHORAGE — In choppy water under blue sky off Bellingham, a Shell Oil crew lowered a “capping stack” 200 feet in the water and put it through maneuvers with underwater robots connected by cable to operators on the surface, a test that fulfilled one of the final steps required for permission to drill exploratory wells in Arctic waters.

The capping stack looks like a giant spark plug and is designed to kill an undersea oil well blowout by providing a metal-to-metal seal on a malfunctioning blowout preventer.


 
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