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It's a technical/scientific borehole, not an exploration well. In fact, part of the whole IODP program involves evaluation of safety for all proposed wells, and one of the number one safety goals is to ensure that no significant quantities of hydrocarbons will be encountered that might be an environmental hazard, or any other type of environmental hazard (there is more than oil and gas to worry about). The safety committee is independent of the committees that evaluate the scientific merit of the sites where the holes will be drilled and how they will be drilled (See the summary here -- the "Environmental Protection and Safety Panel" is the one you want -- there's a bunch of information on their procedures if you follow the link on that page). That the safety committee does it's job properly is demonstrated by the hundreds of wells that have been drilled world-wide since the 1960s in all the oceans of the world by the preceding DSDP and ODP programs, none of which has encountered significant hydrocarbons or resulted in any other kind of spill.

And if you're looking for advice on where to drill in order to not encounter hydrocarbons, who better to ask for data and technical support than the oil companies? These companies are already collecting data in order to try to find oil. The same data is just as useful to figure out where there isn't likely to be any oil.

Just to be absolutely clear: neither Shell nor any other oil company was calling the shots. Looking at the current safety committee makeup it looks like 1/3 company, 2/3 scientific institutions. It's less than that for the science planning committee -- in fact, I don't see any there. The point is, the companies have a lot of experience drilling holes in deep water, so why wouldn't you have people with that kind of experience on the committee assessing safety? This would especially be true of areas where the scientific interests and the company interests happen to be in the same geographic area.

It's a technical/scientific borehole, not an exploration well. In fact, part of the whole IODP program involves evaluation of safety for all proposed wells, and one of the number one safety goals is to ensure that no significant quantities of hydrocarbons will be encountered that might be an environmental hazard, or any other type of environmental hazard (there is more than oil and gas to worry about). The safety committee is independent of the committees that evaluate the scientific merit of the sites where the holes will be drilled and how they will be drilled (See the summary here -- the "Environmental Protection and Safety Panel" is the one you want -- there's a bunch of information on their procedures if you follow the link on that page). That the safety committee does it's job properly is demonstrated by the hundreds of wells that have been drilled world-wide since the 1960s in all the oceans of the world by the preceding DSDP and ODP programs, none of which has encountered significant hydrocarbons or resulted in any other kind of spill.

And if you're looking for advice on where to drill in order to not encounter hydrocarbons, who better to ask for data and technical support than the oil companies? These companies are already collecting data in order to try to find oil. The same data is just as useful to figure out where there isn't likely to be any oil.

Just to be absolutely clear: neither Shell nor any other oil company was calling the shots. Looking at the current safety committee makeup it looks like 1/3 company, 2/3 scientific institutions. It's less than that for the science planning committee -- in fact, I don't see any there. The point is, the companies have a lot of experience drilling holes in deep water, so why wouldn't you have people with that kind of experience on the committee assessing safety? This would especially be true of areas where the scientific interests and the company interests happen to be in the same geographic area.