Environmental students protest against drilling in the Arctic

Two environmentalists chained themselves to the arctic chain of the Arctic Challenger in the port of Billingham, Washington State, to protest against plans to drill new wells by Royal Dutch Shell.

On the night of Friday, May 22, a student, Chiara Rose, chained herself to an anchor chain using a climbing safety cable. On Saturday, she was joined by another student, Matt Fuller.

The coast guard boat spent all night near the ship, watching Rose, but so far no action has been taken to prevent the action. Coast Guard spokesman Katelyn Shearer (Katelyn Shearer) said rescuers fear for the safety of activists and others. She also said that the coast guard called on Rose to refuse to participate in the action.

The organizers of the action said that Rose and Fuller are protesting against Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. According to environmentalist Rob Lewis (Rob Lewis), although the Arctic Challenger is not designed for drilling, but for collecting oil in case of its leakage, activists doubt that it can prevent an environmental disaster similar to the one that occurred during the explosion of the drilling platform Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lewis also said that the coast guard did not interfere with environmentalists, but confiscated their boats.

New drilling plans have caused protests of environmentalists. Last weekend, hundreds of people held a protest in Seattle, where part of the Shell fleet is located, including the Polar Pioneer drilling rig.

Shell has already spent about 6 billions of dollars on exploration in the Arctic. She suspended work after 31 December 2012, her Kulluk drilling rig (Kulluk) pulled away from the towing vessel during a storm, began to drift and ran aground. Shell acknowledged that no one "really knows how to clean oil from floating ice arrays and broken ice."

In the 2010 year, an explosion at a BP-owned deepwater platform in the Gulf of Mexico led to a spill of millions of barrels of oil. In this regard, French Total head Christophe de Margerie in the fall of 2012, urged his colleagues to abandon drilling in the Arctic because of high reputational risks. He noted that if an oil spill happens and the environment suffers serious damage, it will permanently undermine the reputation of any company.