Shell’s rigs drilled two shallow wells last summer, but were halted by government officials before they reached oil-bearing formations. Officials would not allow Shell to drill deeper because the company did not have the required capacity to contain spills after the testing failure of a device designed to cap a runaway well and collect the oil.

In the past several months, the Coast Guard has examined the containment barge and the rebuilt dome, and both passed necessary tests. But the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement still needs to inspect the equipment before it can be deployed. Those inspections were originally to be done later this month, but have been put off because of the Kulluk accident.

Environmental advocates have been leery of the Arctic drilling program for years and became especially vocal after the Kulluk ran aground.

Greenpeace, which is circulating petitions calling on President Obama to halt the Arctic drilling program, said that the Interior Department’s reassessment was long overdue.

“We’ve repeatedly been told Shell is the best in the business, and so we can only conclude after this series of mishaps that the best in the business is simply not good enough for the Arctic,” said Dan Howells, Greenpeace deputy campaigns director. “We only hope that 60 days is long enough to properly examine the extraordinary number of dangerous incidents that have beset Shell’s accident-prone drilling program and put Alaska’s environment at risk.”

Michael LeVine, senior Pacific counsel for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that government regulators were too lax in allowing the program to go forward without adequate assurances that Shell could operate safely and competently.

“We hope this review amounts to more than a paper exercise,” Mr. LeVine said. “The Department of the Interior, after all, is complicit in Shell’s failures because it granted the approvals that allowed Shell to operate.”