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Seattle 'kayaktivists' detained for blocking Shell's Arctic oil drilling rig Shell's Arctic oil rig departs Seattle after 'kayaktivists' detained over protest
(about 1 hour later)
The US Coast Guard says it has detained several protesters in kayaks who tried to block Royal Dutch Shell’s drill rig as it leaves Seattle on its way to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean. After a final protest by kayak-paddling activists, Shell’s deep-sea oil drilling rig left the port of Seattle on Monday morning, headed for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea – and, environmentalists say, towards imminent disaster.
Called the Polar Pioneer, the ship arrived in Seattle in mid-May, shortly after the Obama administration’s controversial approval of exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic. It soon drew a fleet of “kayaktivists” whose colorful blockades turned the 400ft-long, 300ft-tall colossus into a symbol of Arctic drilling.
On Monday morning, after receiving news of the Polar Pioneer’s planned departure, 16 kayaktivists gathered before dawn. Two hours later they were pulled from the water by the US Coast Guard, and tugboats pulled the Polar Pioneer out to sea.
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Lieutenant Dana Warr says several people were detained Monday, mostly for violating the safety zone around the vessel. He didn’t immediately know how many. He says the rig departed around 6am with police and Coast Guard enforcing the safety zone. “Our next step is to make sure where our activists are. They’re being detained by the Coast Guard,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Cassady Sharp as the ship passed from sight. “Then the ship has a two-week journey to Alaska. The movement has got quite big in this region. We expect the protests to continue.”
Greenpeace spokeswoman Cassady Sharp says about a dozen “kayaktivists” paddled out around 4am and formed a blockade. She says about 40 to 50 supporters in kayaks and canoes lined up behind them. Looming over the departure, and over the entire issue of Arctic oil drilling, are the two highest-profile spills of recent history: the Exxon Valdez oil spill, off Alaska’s Prince William Sound, and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout.
Shell spokesman Curtis Smith says the rig is on its way to Alaska and the company remains “committed to operating in a safe, environmentally responsible manner”. The Valdez spill was a lesson in how unprepared people were for oil’s complicated, long-term ecological effects, said University of North Carolina marine scientist Charles Peterson. Impacts rippled through food chains, causing damage – to fisheries, cetaceans and the very structure of the aquatic environment – that took decades to recover from, and in some cases are permanent.
Whereas Valdez was a surface spill, the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred a mile beneath the ocean. There, said Peterson, we learned how differently oil behaves at extreme depths: forming suspended plumes rather than rising to the surface, and proving extremely difficult to control and to clean.
Both lessons may apply to a deep-sea Arctic spill. The Polar Pioneer’s first wells will be sited at depths of 8,000ft, and a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report put the chances of a major spill happening before century’s end at 75%. Even if it beats those odds, drilling in the Arctic represents the tapping of a vast new source of carbon pollution, pushing Earth’s climate even further into peril.
According to Sharp, it will take a month for the Polar Pioneer to reach its final destination off Alaska’s North Slope. “It’s not too late for President Obama to change his mind and cancel the permit,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s his decision.”