Week of October 21, 2012
It was standing room only on Oct. 11 as members of the public crammed into a meeting room in the University of Alaska Anchorage, to hear testimony on lessons learned from Shell’s drilling venture in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas this year. The occasion was a field meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. And Sen. Mark Begich, the lone committee member at the hearing, sat at a table facing representatives from Shell, government agencies and North Slope communities, each of whom presented their perspective on the summer’s events in the Arctic offshore.