News reports across the world have been documenting the decline in Arctic sea ice to the point where it is at the lowest level ever. Even in the United States the state of the Arctic has reached the mainstream media and a YouTube video of a rogue weather girl makes enjoyable watching. I don’t know whether it is real or not but it is certainly great fun. The Arctic sea ice is essential for life on earth. An interesting and well written article on the Think Progress website tells us exactly why the Arctic sea ice is so important. That is why it is so important that we win the campaign to save the Arctic.
With days to go before Shell Day 2 all sorts of stuff is happening. Chief amongst this is the announcement by Shell that they have had to stop their exploratory drilling for this summer. But don’t get your hopes up. Exciting news as this is, the only reason they haven’t started is due to equipment failure. A new kind of containment dome designed to be used in the case of an oil spillage has been damaged in transit and a new permit to resume drilling will be needed so they will have to wait till after the Arctic winter to start drilling again. Responding to Shell's latest Arctic setback, Ben Ayliffe, senior Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace International, said: "Shell has invested seven years of effort and spent the best part of $5bn on its Arctic programme, but we can now see what a monumentally reckless gamble this was. The company has nothing to show for it except a series of almost farcical safety mishaps that has left its reputation in tatters.
"Investors must now be asking whether investing such vast sums of money trying to exploit the fragile Arctic is really worth it."
Not only are Shell having problems but Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas giant have also postponed their drilling for oil for at least a year and are unlikely to start drilling till 2015.
Hopefully readers of this blog will have seen on the Greenpeace website the action against the Gazprom drilling rig by Greenpeace activists, including Kumi Naidoo the Executive Director, of their drilling rig in Russian waters off the Kola Peninsular. Kumi wrote an open letter to President Putin explaining why the preservation of the Arctic is so important to the world. Anders Lorenzen is a Danish born Greenpeace activist based in the London office. He has written an inspiring blog for the Huffington Post which is well worth reading.
All this activity does not mean the Arctic is saved yet. We need to continue to ramp up the pressure. If you haven’t signed up to Save the Arctic then please do so. We will continue to put the pressure on Shell to make sure they don’t drill in the Arctic Ocean so be sure there will be more Shell days and I hope more of you will come out and join us as we peacefully protest outside Shell garages. We will have more garages to choose from as Total garages in the area are being rebranded as Shell.
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