The protests continue
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Seattle blocks Shell use of port; Coast Guard sets more safety zones for vessels
Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In the latest challenge to Shell’s planned 2015 Chukchi Sea drilling program, the mayor of Seattle has ruled that the city’s port must obtain a new land use permit, if Shell is to use the port as a West Coast base for its Arctic operations. And, concerned about possible accidents involving protestors against Shell’s Arctic program, the U.S. Coast Guard has proposed further safety zones around the vessels in the company’s Arctic drilling fleet. Activist environmentalist organization Greenpeace has already conducted one boarding operation on a drilling vessel under contract to Shell, while that vessel was transiting the Pacific Ocean en route for the U.S. The drilling vessel, the Polar Pioneer, is now stationed at Port Angeles, near Seattle.
Oil industry opposition Apparently Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is using the port permit issue as a means of expressing his opposition to fossil fuel development. According to a report in the Seattle Times Murray has concurred with Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development’s finding that Shell’s planned use of the port does not fall within the definition of the cargo operations that the current permit covers.
“While requiring a permit may not stop the port’s plans, it does give the port an opportunity to pause, an opportunity to rethink the issues,” Murray told a fundraising breakfast for Climate Solutions, a clean energy economy non-profit, according to the Seattle Times report. “This is an opportunity, I believe, for the port and all of us to make a bold statement about how oil companies contribute to climate change, oil spills and other environmental disasters and reject this short-term lease.”
Environmental organizations have been opposing the lease of the port’s Terminal 5 to Shell for the company’s operations.
Shell: won’t delay program According to a report in the Fuelfix oil industry news website, on May 5 Ann Pickard, Shell executive vice president for the Arctic, told the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston that the Seattle permit problem will not derail Shell’s Arctic program.
Although “it’s not my preferred approach … we have backup plans,” Pickard said, according to the Firefox report. “I don’t think this will delay the program.”
Pickard told Firefox that there are alternative ports that Shell can use.
In a May 5 email Megan Baldino, Shell spokeswoman in Alaska, told Petroleum News that Shell continues to review Seattle’s permit interpretation.
Safety zones Meantime the U.S. Coast Guard has been filing a series of proposals for establishing safety zones around the vessels that will participate in Shell’s Chukchi Sea drilling program. In recognition of the likelihood of continuing protests against Shell’s Arctic activities, the Coast Guard had already set safety zones for Shell’s vessels in the Puget Sound and Seattle area.
On May 1 the Coast Guard filed a notice in the Federal Register, proposing safety zones around offshore exploration or support vessels in the Dutch Harbor and Broad Bay areas of the Aleutian Islands. The zones would extend 25 yards out from vessels at anchor and 100 yards from vessels under way. The agency says that the purpose of the safety zones is to protect people and vessels - lawful demonstrations will be allowed outside the safety zones as long as they do not represent a safety hazard.
“Based on information provided by private entities affiliated with oil exploration activities, the Coast Guard anticipates approximately 28 exploration or support vessels will call on Dutch Harbor during the periods of time that the temporary safety zones are in effect,” the Coast Guard said in its Federal Register notice. “The addition of these vessels in conjunction with the high volume of traffic operating within the Port of Dutch Harbor creates a safety risk for all vessels operating therein.”
The Coast Guard has also proposed similar safety zones for Shell’s staging area in Goodhope Bay, Kotzebue Sound. And on May 4 the Coast Guard proposed a 500-meter safety zone around the drillship Noble Discoverer that Shell will use in the Chukchi, with that safety zone being in effect both when the drillship is anchored and when the vessel is deploying and recovering moorings, when on location for drilling.
Restraining order Judge Sharon Gleason from the federal District Court in Alaska has already issued a temporary restraining order against Greenpeace, banning protestors from the organization from boarding or interfering with certain of Shell’s vessels. The judge has yet to determine whether to broaden the injunction to include all vessels involved in Shell’s Chukchi Sea program.
Shell, if it can successfully obtain all of the permits that it needs, hopes to move its drilling fleet north into the Chukchi in early July.
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