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THE WITNESSDespite the potentially devastating environmental risks, Shell’s Arctic Drilling program has had President Obama’s blessing since the President took office. The President has given Shell major leeway to bend EPA rules, forgo spill response requirements, and wink at general maritime protocol in order to drill for, at best, enough oil to last a year.
Biologist Kirk Sato embarks on submarine dives in the Arctic
Watching the Esperanza move across the horizon of the Bering Sea, I realized I was about to embark on an experience of a lifetime. However, my training at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and more recently the research cruise, San Diego Coastal Expedition, prepared me for the field research I was about to conduct with Greenpeace in Pribilof Canyon.
In 2007, a research team led by John Hocevar (Greenpeace) set out to explore Zemchung and Pribilof Canyons for the first time with submersible technology. During these scientific dives, video recordings and collected samples were analyzed by expert biologists around the world. This process was repeated at 36 sites, a new species of sponge was discovered, and new ecological associations were found. Video footage of habitats rich with biodiversity and of unremarkable complexity were documented. We are now exploring the sites missed in 2007 to get a more complete picture of the canyon’s gems. Continue reading
Guest blog from our friends at Oceana
Bowhead whales would be affected by Shell's drilling. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Shell now has the green light from the government to harass marine mammals and put them at risk of a major oil spill in the region.
The Arctic Ocean is home to an abundance of wildlife. In the spring, consistent and extensive polynyas—stretches of open water surrounded by sea ice—create pathways into the Arctic for bowhead whales, seals, and birds seeking to take advantage of the explosion of productivity created by summer’s constant daylight. Continue reading
Yesterday afternoon US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the Obama administration’s plans to lead the world further down the path of Arctic destruction by continuing to feed our addiction to oil. Despite the enormous opposition, the administration will hold further sales for leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and in what we can only hope won’t become his Titanic moment, Salazar boasted that “there’s not going to be an oil spill.” Arctic drilling, he went on, is simply another step in our “all of the above” energy strategy. Continue reading
by Nick Young, Greenpeace New Zealand.
Right now Greenpeace activists are stopping a Shell drill ship from leaving the Port of Taranaki in New Zealand for the Arctic.
Climbers – including actress Lucy Lawless -have scaled the rig’s drill derrick and set up camp, equipped with enough gear to last for days Continue reading
It’s official. On Friday, Shell got a step closer to drilling for oil in our planet’s last wild ocean – the Arctic.
The company’s oil spill response plan for the Chukchi Sea off Alaska was given the all clear by US authorities, even though it’s a work of almost complete fantasy.
While Shell prepares to start trashing this stunning wilderness, putting it at risk of catastrophic oil spills and more melting as a result of more climate change, its PR people are getting busy. This evening, they’ve invited influential guests to an event at the National Gallery in London, in the hope that those guests will lend the Shell brand a veneer of respectability.
We’ve decided to tell their guests the truth: this year Shell is planning to drill for oil in the pristine waters of the Arctic, and its plans will change this fragile wilderness forever.
So our climbers have made sure that guests at the National Gallery are met with an unexpected picture when they arrive; a short while ago, they evaded security and are preparing to unfurl a huge banner with the words “It’s no oil painting”. Our climber Hannah is tweeting from the rooftop using the hashtag #SaveTheArctic.
Meanwhile, Paula Bear has emerged from her wintry den to mingle with the crowds in Trafalgar Square, where dozens of Greenpeace volunteers are talking to curious passers-by.
Shell sees the Arctic as a resource to be exploited for profit. We think it should be protected. What do you think? Join the discussion on our blog and on Twitter:#SaveTheArctic.
Polar bears – like other Arctic species including beluga whales, narwhals and walruses – are already under severe pressure in the Arctic from climate change. In just 30 years, the Arctic has lost 75% of its sea ice, and temperatures in the Arctic are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth.
While more and more people recognise the changing face of the Arctic as a stark warning about climate change (earlier today, several scientists gave evidence to this effect to the parliamentary inquiry, Protecting the Arctic), Shell sees the melting ice as a business opportunity – a chance to drill in newly accessible areas to find more of the oil that caused the melt in the first place.
And Shell’s plans pose a new threat to the Arctic’s stunning – and ecologically fragile – coastlines and oceans: the threat of a catastrophic oil spill, which would be impossible to clean up.
Shell is just first of the so-called ‘supermajors’ – the big oil companies – to make exploitation of the Arctic a key part of their strategy. But if it strikes oil this summer, other global oil giants may follow.
Shell sees the Arctic as a resource to be exploited for profit. We think it should be protected. What do you think? Join the discussion on our blog and on Twitter:#SaveTheArctic.