Unalaska, AK – On Saturday, the Kulluk mobile drilling rig was brought to Unalaska by the icebreaker Tor Viking. The drilling rig is owned by Shell Oil, and it's set to stay in Captain's Bay through the wintertime.

The Kulluk was brought from McKinley Bay in Canada, and Shell is mooring it here for the next few months as the company works on repairs to the rigAfter that, the company is hoping the rig will be ready for use.

"The Kulluk is actually scheduled to be in that area for several months at this point for upgrades, and also to be on ready status in the event that we pursue a drilling program in 2011," says Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith. "The Kulluk would be used as a second rig in the extremely unlikely event that we would need to drill a relief well in the original rig itself, and the mobile Discoverer was not able to do so."

Though the Kulluk has been stationed in McKinley Bay for a few years now, it hasn't been used in drilling operations.

"The intention was to use it as a two-rig drilling program," says Smith. "When we first reentered Alaska, the plan was to have two rigs working simultaneously because of the short drilling season. We decided to scale back our program at the request of stakeholders that we come in with something smaller at first, and therefore the Kulluk was not brought up to ready status."

The Kulluk was built in 1982, and it has a conical shape with flared sides and a drilling derrick up top. Even Smith thinks that the rig makes somewhat of an odd couple when paired with the bumblebee-like Tor Viking.

"It looks somewhat like the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars," he says.

Because of a moratorium on offshore drilling in the arctic, Shell has largely suspended operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, with the exception of some seismic research.