Royal Dutch Shell, known to you and me as the Shell oil company, has decided to scale back their Alaskan offshore exploration plans. What with the price of oil dropping, and Alaskans and environmental groups really really not liking the idea of drilling in the Beaufort Sea region, the New York Times reports that Shell has decided to maybe try something else.

The company said it had informed the Minerals Management Service on Tuesday that it was withdrawing its drilling plans for the 2007-2009 period, which expires at the end of the year, and that it plans to file a new, more focused, exploration program soon.

So what does “more focused” mean in this situation? Basically, Shell is cutting its (already sizable) losses on the project and just doing less.

The company said that the new plan would include a one-year drilling program as opposed to the original three-year plan; one drilling rig instead of two; a goal to drill two wells instead of four; and retro-fitting the Frontier Discoverer drilling rig with the best available air-emission technology.

Shell had staked billions on offshore drilling in the Beaufort Sea, Camden Bay, and the Chukchi Sea, but had been sued by a couple environmental groups and an Inuit interests group to stop the exploration from going forward. This led to Shell being blocked from starting work in some areas due to an “improper” environmental impact study.

So, good news for the environment, for now, but we’ll see what happens when the price of oil goes back up. But, seeing as oil is tied to the dollar, that might not be until 2045.

photo credit: zieak’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons