The fuel on board the rig is used to power equipment and is not the result of the drilling operations Shell conducted off the North Slope, on the opposite side of the vast state from where the Kulluk now rests.
The fuel will be processed on a floating rig some 80 km northwest of Palawan island in the west, and piped 504 km to Batangas province, south of Manila.
Before the explosion, the rig carried 2.6m litres of diesel fuel and was pumping 8, 000 barrels (1.27m litres) of crude oil a day - a volume which may still be leaking from the well into the Gulf of Mexico.