It’s a good thing for the environment that the Shell Oil Co. decided to discontinue its pursuit of untapped oil reserves in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. But local environmental activists are misguided if they think their efforts in May had any impact on that decision.
Shell Oil had invested $7 billion for the privilege to drill up to six test wells off the northwest coast of Alaska to learn where it could access the 26 billion barrels of oil the U.S. Geological Survey estimated was there. It even forewent other oil exploration elsewhere around the world to focus on this region. Alas, its test drills turned up “disappointing” results, according to a company statement, and Shell Oil is abandoning its exploration “for the foreseeable future.”
The company also cited “the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment,” since drilling in the Arctic was only allowed this summer.
Immediately following Shell Oil’s Sept. 28 announcement to leave Arctic oil exploration behind, local activists, including Mayor Ed Murray and Seattle City Council members, claimed their own victory in driving them away from the Arctic — more than 2,000 miles away.
City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, one of the about 400 “kayaktivists” who took to the waters for a few days in May to protest Shell Oil’s home base at the Port of Seattle’s Terminal 5, said, “I firmly believe that our actions — in combination with [Twitter handle] #ShellNo activism in Seattle and across the country — created the regulatory uncertainty Shell hinted at today.”
For a company that made $16.3 billion in profit last year (third-most in the world), according to Fortune magazine’s Global 500 listing, Royal Dutch Shell (which owns Shell Oil) won’t be stopped by a few hundred “kayaktivists” who circled its Polar Pioneer floating drill rig to delay its departure. If Greenpeace’s more aggressive tactics over the spans of years haven’t stopped big oil’s pursuit of billions more in profits, then the Seattle protests didn’t even dent the big-oil conscience.
With forecasted lower fuel prices for the long haul, Shell Oil needed to find more than “indications of oil and gas” to substantiate further exploration that would cost billions more. Certainly, the proportionately small number of Seattle protesters doesn’t figure into that accounting, either.
We should rejoice that the environment won’t face additional destruction from Arctic drilling, but the real credit for Shell Oil’s decision should go to Mother Earth, who’s hiding her resources — at least for now.