Uncle Sam has loosened the ranks on Arctic oil drilling and Royal Dutch Shell has the inside track on drilling in the Great White North.

Should investors put on their snowshoes and wade into Shell stock?

For the short term, not really. Shell has already said it won’t have any “exploratory wells” ready until 2013. The company’s stock price stands at $69 per share this week, with no appreciable uptick after the Arctic announcement.

Plus, the government has not been overly expansive about granting drilling rights to Shell off the Alaska coast. Per the agreement, Shell can only drill 1,400 feet below the sea, and there are some additional roadblocks.

Up first is the approval – not yet granted – by the U.S. Coast Guard on a spill-containment barge before the U.S. government will allow Shell to drill to its preferred level, about 4,000 feet.

Plus, Shell is up against the clock in its drilling timeline. It has until Sept. 24, 2012, to stop drilling in the Chukchi Sea before icy waters set in, although the U.S. Interior Department is considering an extension.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters in a conference call last week that government officials are skeptical whether Shell can even get of the ground in the Arctic in 2012. “We don’t even know if there’s going to be exploration this year,” he told reporters and analysts.

Longer term, though, the Shell-Arctic marriage may be a winner.

Here is how the Wall Street analyst firm Zacks Research sees Shell’s Arctic play (in an Aug. 31 research note):

Although the company remains on track with its Arctic drilling venture and started the operation in the Arctic at the beginning of the year, it got delayed by the regulatory restriction. It has already spent $4.5 billion to explore oil and gas off Alaska's coast. Shell is authorized to dig 20-by-40-foot mud-line cellars, which are expected to hold and protect a well's blowout preventer, 40 feet below the seabed. Down another 1,500 feet, the company can also drill narrow pilot holes that disclose obstructions or gas pockets. Management expects to commence drilling in a mud-line cellar and a pilot hole within the next two weeks. The hydrocarbon-bearing zone will, however, take another couple of weeks. However, the government restricted Shell to drill into oil reservoirs until the spill containment system is fully certified.

Zacks says that Shell has the “strong and diversified” portfolio needed to absorb the $4.5 billion it’s already laid out for its Chukchi Sea drilling operations. Although Zacks has continued its “Neutral” rating on Shell, it notes that the company’s “strong inventory of development projects and increased capital expenditures should help volume growth in the long run” and buy the company some time to make hay in the Arctic.

It also has a big leg up on the competition. Shell, at the very minimum, is moving forward in the Arctic. Only one other major oil producer has made nearly as much progress in the region (Rosneft, along the Russian Arctic coast).

Sure, BP and ExxonMobil have expressed strong interest in drilling in the Arctic, a region that energy analysts see as the last, great frontier for global oil – but Shell has a big head start.

Here is how The New York Times put it in a May 2012 article on Shell’s long-term plans (and obstacles) in the Arctic.

“Industry experts and national security officials view the Alaskan Arctic as the last great domestic oil prospect, one that over time could bring the country a giant step closer to cutting its dependence on foreign oil.”

Few know for sure how much oil is under the Arctic Sea, but the big picture view is that there could be billions of potential barrels of oil.

The U.S. Geographical Survey has taken a stab at an estimate, noting that its research shows about 90 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That’s a big number. If true, the Arctic could account for more than 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil, the agency reports. Other estimates report 27 billion barrels of oil along the Alaskan coastal shelf, and another 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

It may be a guessing game on how much oil the region contains, but it’s no guessing game that the Arctic offers huge potential for oil companies, oil consumers and investors.

For Shell, the region could also significantly increase the company’s bottom line, and eventually, its share price, too.

"Shell is making a big bet (in the Arctic), but I think it's justified based on the geology," notes Oswald Clint, an energy analyst at Sanford Bernstein.

With limited resources globally, Shell and other oil companies may not have a choice, as Clint says. "Adding 200 million barrels in new reserves doesn't move the needle for an oil company as big as Shell," he adds. "They really have no choice but to push into the big, unexplored basins like the Arctic."

And push Shell will, even as other oil producers play catch-up.