Shell shouldn’t destroy the Arctic

Voices from the Land from Alaska Wilderness League on Vimeo.

From Democrats.com in the USA:

Unsafe, unclean, and unrealistic. After being exposed for its faulty scheme, Shell actually escalated its plans from six to ten new oil wells in the fragile Arctic Ocean – each with the destructive capacity of the fated Deepwater Horizon rig that blackened the Gulf Coast last year!

Our only Arctic ecosystem is too precious to lose. Don’t let Shell muscle our Department of the Interior into approving ten new Arctic oil wells.

Bob Fertik

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Dear Activist,

Shell Oil just escalated their plans from six to ten new oil wells in the fragile Arctic Ocean – without a proven plan to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic’s icy conditions!

The Secretary of the Interior needs to hear from you: no rubber stamp for Arctic drilling.

Breaking news: Shell Oil makes money by drilling for oil – not by protecting the Arctic.

…I know, I know – it’s hardly news to you. But to the Department of the Interior, which for years blindly trusted the oil industry’s claims that offshore drilling was “safe and clean,” it seems the notion is downright shocking!

Now for the news that will shock you: after Alaska Wilderness League members like you spoke up, Shell Oil – whose plans for Arctic drilling rest on the same baseless, untested assumptions that doomed the Deepwater Horizon rig – actually escalated their Arctic drilling scheme from six new oil wells to ten. The Secretary of the Interior is poised to approve the plan – unless you speak up now.

Tell Secretary Salazar: Put down the rubber stamp and protect our shores. America’s only Arctic ecosystem is too precious to lose.

The Department of the Interior is responsible for regulating oil drilling, and making sure that oil companies have a plan to clean up a spill if it happens. But for years they have been approving unrealistic, impossible clean-up plans. Like BP‘s plan for the Gulf, Shell‘s oil spill plan for the Arctic is riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies.

Here’s what we know about Shell‘s rush to drill in the Arctic:

* It’s not safe. There is no proven technology to clean up oil spilled amid the Arctic’s broken sea ice and emergency response equipment is hundreds of miles away.
* It’s not clean. Shell claims to have ‘perfected Arctic oil spill response’ despite relying on a plan that includes glorified mops and buckets.
* It’s not realistic. Shell claims it can clean up 30 times more oil in the harsh Arctic climate than what was recovered in the temperate Gulf of Mexico.

With your help, Alaska Wilderness League has exposed these truths about Shell‘s drilling plans. But Shell won’t reconsider its plans – instead it has escalated them from six new wells to ten, amplifying its false chorus through the halls of government, “safe and clean, safe and clean…” Shell‘s billion-dollar hope is that you stay silent while it muscles Interior into rubberstamping its faulty plans to drill 10 new oil wells in our one and only Arctic Ocean.

Speak up! Shell‘s untested, unsafe Arctic drilling should not be approved.

Thank you for all that you do,

Cindy Shogan
Executive Director
Alaska Wilderness League

Greenpeace director arrested after boarding controversial Arctic oil rig: here.

Arctic melting will affect the migratory strategies of seabirds: here.

10 Amazing Photos of Animals Hidden Under the Arctic Ice: here.

Dumping buckets of fish guts into the ocean turns out not to be so good for the ecosystems involved. Basically, the more dead fish you put in the water, the fewer live fish can survive there. Off the coast of Alaska, one seafood processor has created “a massive wasteland of fish guts about 50 acres or more … a dead zone”: here.

October 2011. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has released camera-trap photographs of “nest predators” (animals that prey upon the eggs and young of nesting birds) caught in the act of raiding nests in the Alaskan Arctic. The photos show – sometimes graphically – how the ground-nesting birds may be impacted by predators that benefit from human influence associated with energy development activity: here.