A
group of Greenpeace activists illegally boarded a Shell-operated rig
Monday to protest the company’s plans to restart its offshore Alaska
drilling campaign. The rig is leased from Transocean, whose rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico creating the 2010 BP oil disaster.
Six Greenpeace members intercepted the Polar Pioneer rig about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii and scaled the 38,000 ton platform, Greenpeace said.
The group said it will set up camp on the underside of the rig’s main deck to protest Shell’s forthcoming Arctic drilling campaign.
Greenpeace told Reuters the group will display a banner decorated with the names of people who oppose Arctic drilling but the protesters will not interfere with the vessel’s travel plans.
“We’re here to highlight that in less than 100 days Shell is going to the Arctic to drill for oil,” Johno Smith, a protester who boarded the rig, told Reuters.
Shell confirmed the boarding and said the protesters are “jeopardizing not only the safety of the crew on board, but the protesters themselves.”
The company’s bid to restart its Arctic drilling campaign scored a major win last week after the U.S. Department of Interior upheld a 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale that had been suspended after legal challenges.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will now begin a formal review of Shell’s Chukchi Sea exploration plans that will include public engagement and additional environmental analyses.
The company filed an exploration plan in August with the BOEM to drill up to six Arctic wells.
The Interior Department is also considering a request from Shell to extend its time in the Arctic. We are certain they will allow them to do so, as these "officials" are sold to the oil and gas lobby.
Shell lost control of a massive oil rig called the Kulluk in 2012, which eventually ran aground. But in anticipation of returning to the region for the first time since then, Shell has already moved rigs to Alaska.
Many environmentalists oppose energy exploration in the offshore Arctic, saying that once production comes on line any oil spill would be extremely difficult to clean up in a remote area with rough and frigid seas.
Six Greenpeace members intercepted the Polar Pioneer rig about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii and scaled the 38,000 ton platform, Greenpeace said.
The group said it will set up camp on the underside of the rig’s main deck to protest Shell’s forthcoming Arctic drilling campaign.
Greenpeace told Reuters the group will display a banner decorated with the names of people who oppose Arctic drilling but the protesters will not interfere with the vessel’s travel plans.
“We’re here to highlight that in less than 100 days Shell is going to the Arctic to drill for oil,” Johno Smith, a protester who boarded the rig, told Reuters.
Shell confirmed the boarding and said the protesters are “jeopardizing not only the safety of the crew on board, but the protesters themselves.”
The company’s bid to restart its Arctic drilling campaign scored a major win last week after the U.S. Department of Interior upheld a 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale that had been suspended after legal challenges.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will now begin a formal review of Shell’s Chukchi Sea exploration plans that will include public engagement and additional environmental analyses.
The company filed an exploration plan in August with the BOEM to drill up to six Arctic wells.
The Interior Department is also considering a request from Shell to extend its time in the Arctic. We are certain they will allow them to do so, as these "officials" are sold to the oil and gas lobby.
Shell lost control of a massive oil rig called the Kulluk in 2012, which eventually ran aground. But in anticipation of returning to the region for the first time since then, Shell has already moved rigs to Alaska.
Many environmentalists oppose energy exploration in the offshore Arctic, saying that once production comes on line any oil spill would be extremely difficult to clean up in a remote area with rough and frigid seas.
//--------------------------------------------//
Greenpeace activists occupy Shell oil rig in middle of Pacific
Story highlights
- Six brave Greecpeace activists scale the Polar Pioneer, hundreds of miles northwest of Hawaii
- Greenpeace, along with the majority of citizens, opposes Shell's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic
(CNN)Greenpeace activists have climbed aboard a Shell oil rig to protest the company's plans to drill in the Arctic near Alaska.
The
six protesters used ropes and harnesses Monday to scale the huge
platform in the Pacific Ocean, tweeting images of their daunting climb
as they went.
"We made it! We're on
Shell's platform. And we're not alone," wrote Aliyah Field, an American
activist taking part in the protest. "Everyone can help turn this into a
platform for people power!"
The rig,
the Polar Pioneer, is on its way to the Arctic via Seattle. The
environmental activists caught up with it about 750 miles northwest of
Hawaii, Greenpeace said.
They plan to occupy the underside of the rig's main deck and say they have enough supplies to stay there for several days.
Shell
didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment late Monday.
But company spokeswoman Kelly Op De Weegh told Agence France-Presse that
the boarding was illegal and jeopardized the safety of the activists
and the crew.
Greenpeace is furious over a decision last week
by U.S. authorities to lift the suspensions on leases to drill for oil
and gas in the Chukchi Sea, which lies between northern Alaska and
Russia. Shell and several other oil companies bought exploration leases
for the sea in 2008.
The U.S. government's decision "means that in 100 days, Shell could begin drilling in the Alaskan Arctic," Greenpeace said.
Federal agencies still have to review and approve companies' plans before exploratory drilling can start.
Shell's work in the Arctic has suffered some setbacks in the past, including a drilling barge that ran aground off southern Alaska on December 31, 2012.
Greenpeace
has repeatedly used the occupation of drilling-related vessels to bring
attention to its cause. One group of its activists was detained for months by Russian authorities in 2013.
In
the current episode, the activists pursued the Polar Pioneer, which
Shell is leasing from Transocean, as it traveled thousands of miles
aboard a transport vessel from Malaysia, Greenpeace said.
Besides the American protester Field, the activists come from Australia, Austria, Germany, New Zealand and Sweden.
The U.S. Coast Guard wasn't immediately available for comment late Monday on the incident.
Source: CNN.com
//----------------------------------------------------//
Then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently said, “Shell will not be allowed to move forward into the Arctic to do any kind of exploration unless they have this integrated plan in place that’s satisfactory to the Department of the Interior.”
The reasoning behind this firm stance is clear: “Shell screwed up in 2012,” the secretary said.
Shell's drilling rig ran aground near Kodiak, Alaska. Photo: Captain Kristjan Laxfoss
Indeed, Shell did have an astonishing string of failures and fiascos last year. But the truth is no company will prove a match for the forbidding Arctic environment. Other oil giants have been watching Shell’s misadventures and are starting to second guess their own future in the region.
Norway’s Statoil, for instance, recently said it was postponing plans to drill in the American Arctic until 2015 at the very earliest. The company is already drilling in Norwegian Arctic waters of the Barents Sea, where it does not freeze, is close to infrastructure and has more hospitable weather due to the Gulf Stream.
The American Arctic is different. It is covered by ice most of the year and dominated by extreme cold, hurricane-strength storms, pervasive fog, and long periods of darkness. These obstacles prompted Total SA, the fifth largest oil and gas company in the world, to declare it wouldn’t seek to drill in the Arctic because an accident there would be a “disaster.” German bank WestLB also announced that it would refuse financing to any offshore oil and gas drilling in the region because “the risks and cost are simply too high.”
Some of those risks were on display during Shell’s ill-fated effort last year.
Twenty-four hours after Shell started preliminary drilling early last September its drill rig, the Noble Discoverer, had to turn tail and flee from a 30-mile long iceberg covering 360 square miles of water. In December, a routine winter storm caused Shell’s other drill rig, the Kulluk, to run aground near Alaska’s Kodiak Island on its way to Seattle for maintenance.
If a major spill had occurred, it is clear Shell wasn’t prepared to respond. The company’s emergency response barge—a linchpin of its spill response strategy—was stuck in Bellingham, Washington throughout the drilling season because it kept violating standards for safety, air pollution, and other critical measures. Meanwhile, the containment dome the company was supposed to use to capture oil in the event of spill was “crushed like a beer can” during pre-deployment testing.
There is no backup in the American Arctic when systems fail. The Coast Guard oversees spill response, yet the closest Coast Guard base is 1,000 miles away. Two of the Coast Guards polar icebreaking vessels are not even operational, leaving them with only one. There are few shipping ports or landing strips near the lease sites. Bringing rescue crews and clean up equipment to the Arctic environment would be a staggering challenge.
And even if we could get them there, the region is covered in ice for over eight months a year, and no proven technology has been able to clean up oil in icy waters.
Yet Shell dove right into these treacherous conditions. The company’s subsequent failures prompted the Department of Interior to conduct an urgent, 60-day review of Shell’s operations in the Arctic. The report, released a few weeks ago, described the dangers of drilling in the region and the “catastrophic consequences” a spill would have on the Arctic’s fragile ecosystems and the people who depend upon them for livelihoods and cultural traditions.
Now it’s time for the Obama Administration to put this risky and dangerous drilling on hold immediately. It should not make any new decisions until it has completed a more thorough review of all drilling operations in the Arctic.
Nominee for Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell should prioritize this and ensure the Interior Department does not make the same mistakes again. Shell’s track record reveals the dangers of reckless action in the Arctic.
We must protect this wild ocean before a major disaster occurs.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org
We agree. Shell's adventure will end in disaster. They do not know what they are doing in the frozen waters of the Arctic as the Kulluc fiasco showed. But things will get even worse- far worse - when start drilling and storms and icy water hits them.