Obama Suspends Alaska Offshore Drilling Plans

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration today suspended planned exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2011, a casualty of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The move will stop Shell from drilling five wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off northern Alaska weeks before it had hoped to start work, an administration official told McClatchy Newspapers.

The move will stop for now a controversial expansion of oil drilling in a part of the world that could hold vast stores of oil and natural gas, but which environmentalists warn would come at great risk.