FAIRBANKS — Royal Dutch Shell, the biggest offshore lease holder north of Alaska, said Saturday that new drilling regulations announced last week leave questions unanswered as it cements plans for next year.

A top Shell Alaska executive said last month, days before the Interior Department announced the rules, that his firm planned exploratory drilling for the Beaufort Sea in 2011.

The company — which holds hundreds of leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas — thinks the new rules mirror its existing safety plan, spokesman Curtis Smith said Saturday.

“What remains unclear is our ability to obtain the necessary permits that will actually allow a return to work,” he told the Daily News-Miner by e-mail Saturday.

The Department of the Interior announced regulations Thursday covering “safety equipment, well control systems, and blowout prevention practices on offshore oil and gas operations” aimed at improving workplace safety.

Roughly one week earlier, Pete Slaiby, a vice president at Shell Alaska, told a state legislative panel that oil companies preparing to explore for oil — but not produce, which is easily a decade away in the Beaufort sea — are working with researchers to study Arctic waters and have prepared robust safety and contingency plans for their work there.

Smith said Saturday that Shell feels the announcement didn’t distinguish between a federal moratorium and suspension, respectively, on offshore “deepwater” drilling — generally conducted in the Gulf of Mexico — and exploration elsewhere on the Outer Continental Shelf, including the Arctic seas. He said only that the new rules appear to apply to the Arctic “in some way.”

Slaiby and a counterpart at ConocoPhillips, another major offshore lease holder, told the legislative resources panel last month that shallow-water offshore projects near Alaska could be much safer than those in the deep waters above the Gulf of Mexico’s high-pressure underwater reservoirs. ConocoPhillips said the two companies have worked with the Norwegian Statoil and University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists while preparing an “integrated environmental study program” aimed at better understanding the oceanography.

Legislative resource leaders called the hearing last month, five months after the start of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to gauge safety plans covering any Arctic offshore work. Some said signs indicate the federal moratorium could end later this year. Anchorage Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said it “seemed only prudent” to review environmental regulations covering waters near Alaska's norther shores.

Slaiby told lawmakers his firm was waiting to see the result of federal reviews of the Horizon disaster including an investigation by a presidential commission. He said oil companies' plans in the Arctic focus only, as opposed to heavy production near Mexico, on exploration and research needed to prepare production plans.

The new federal rules announced Thursday “closely match” the safety standards already in place by Shell, which has invested more than $3.5 billion in its Alaska offshore projects, Smith said Saturday. But unknowns still exist, he said.

“Our intent is to drill in 2011,” Smith said. “Where those wells will be drilled has yet to be determined.”

The federal government's stated moratorium regularly refers to "deepwater" drilling, and Gov. Sean Parnell and the state last month filed a lawsuit in federal court opposing any moratorium applying here.

Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.