Coast Guard Effort to Save Shell Oil Rig Hampered by Weather

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The U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Dutch Shell Plc were fighting 70 mile-per-hour winds and 40-foot swells as they tried to assess damage to a floating oil drilling ship that ran aground on a remote Alaskan island.

Authorities haven’t been able to board people onto the Shell rig Kulluk because of the challenging conditions and are still watching the weather, said Jason Moore, a spokesman in Anchorage, Alaska, for the Unified Command, a response group that includes the Coast Guard and industry representatives. The Coast Guard was observing the rig overnight, he said in a telephone interview today.