In Brief

The oil hunter in the Arctic: in the Arctic, Shell is a leader, but not in the way one would hope. It is the first super-major oil company that plans to exploit the fragile Arctic in a high risk hunt for fossil fuels. A search made possible by the rapidly melting ice, itself a result of climate change. Any oil project in the Arctic offshore means new carbon emissions killing Arctic ice as well as a lost opportunity to redirect investment to green energy. Shell has completely dropped renewable energy from its long-term strategy. The oil exploration in the Arctic has biodiversity consequences. While Shell confidently tells us that it has «made numerous plans for dealing with oil in ice». The company also admits that the technical and environmental challenges of oil exploration in the Arctic «are immense». Specialists believe that «there is really no solution or method today that we’re aware of that can actually recover spilt oil from the Arctic». Shell senses a clear opportunity in Alaska, arguing that «much like landing on the moon, it doesn’t hurt to be first.»

Shell

Main Office: Den Haag, Netherlands

Industry: Oil and Gas

Revenue / Net Income: 470 billion $ / 30,9 billion $

Owned by: publicly owned

Employees: 90’000

President Board of Directors: Jorma Ollila

CEO: Peter Voser

Website: www.shell.com

Why should Shell get all the Glory? Oil Companies are All One big OILigarch. From the Post 9-11 War on Islam, which began with The CIA's 9-11 Al CIA Duh Attacks, to Africom, The Expansion of The CIA's Post 9-11 War on Islam, which just happens to be Appropriating Oil Fields Across Africa (Just ask Somalia, Niger, and Libya etc.), to South America (just ask Venezuela, Boliva, Edcador, Colombia, Brazil, etc.) to The Arctic Coast of North America Oil Companies, through they may call themselves Competing Firms, are nothing more than one big Price Fixing, Price Gouging, Oil Spilling OILigarch. From Chevron/Texaco, to Exxon/Mobil, to Shell, and Aramco (Gulf Arabs and Oil Companies joining together in a Corporate Merger), there's no difference between Shell or BP, because they're all One Big Company. As for Shell Drilling in The Arctic, well it appears that one of their Arctic Oil Rigs has already Run Aground in The Arctic, Unable to Overcome Highwinds. So it's only a matter of Time before The Arctic Ocean has a Repeat of The BP Deepwater Horizion Oil Spill. And of course Oil Companies, Shell included have already had Numerous Offshore Oil Spills in The Gulf of Guinea and Indonesia, that are hushed up by The Crocking Heads CNN NBC ABC CBS FOX BBC, who would much rather Air Stories like Michael Jackson, Athletes Steroids, or Tiger Woods then the Truth. Shell is only one part of One Big OILigarch or Monopoly as I prefer to call it.

Irresponsible Corporate Behavior

Shell is opening up the ice-bound seas of the Alaskan Arctic. The company strip mines the boreal forest to access the Canadian tar sands. It operates the world’s deepest oil platform over a mile and half deep in the Gulf of Mexico. It haunts the Niger Delta. When it comes to controversial, risky and polluting forms of oil, Shell is always there.

The company sees the Alaskan Arctic as the next great oil frontier, saying it has «significant untapped potential and will play an increasingly important role in meeting the energy challenge in the future.» The company has confirmed it will return to drill further wells the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in the coming years, saying «we’ll go back and repeat that operation in 2013, potentially 2014, until we really get a feel for how much hydrocarbons are in place». This is a case of leading the way to global and regional disaster. Tar sands, aka oil sands, refers to deposits of the hydrocarbon bitumen mixed with clay, sand and water, which can be processed to make synthetic crude oil. The largest deposits are found in Alberta, Canada, in an area the size of England. The environmental impact of the tar sands industry is staggering.

Nearly 29% of Shell’s reserves are in the Canadian tar sands. The company is the third largest operator in the tar sands, responsible for 8% of all Canadian tar sand production, and that proportion is set to grow with the Jackpine mine expansion project.These are astounding figures for a company that would have you believe it is an ally in the movement for sustainability, because the tar sands industry ranks among the most destructive forms of extraction on the planet.

Consequences

The ice at the top of the world reflects much of the sun’s heat back into space and keeps our whole planet cool, stabilizing the weather systems that we depend on to grow our food. Protecting the ice means protecting us all. In the last 30 years, we’ve lost as much as three-quarters of the floating ice cap at the top of the world. The volume of that sea ice measured by satellites in the summer, when it reaches its smallest, has shrunk so fast that scientists say it’s now in a «death spiral». For over 800,000 years, ice has been a permanent feature of the Arctic ocean. It’s melting because of use of dirty fossil fuel energy, and in the near future it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. Any oil project in Arctic offshore means new carbon emissions killing Arctic ice as well as no chance to phase out oil in the mean time and redirect investment to green energy.

The oil exploration in Arctic has biodiversity consequences. While Shell confidently tells us that it has «made numerous plans for dealing with oil in ice», the company also admits that the technical and environmental challenges of oil exploration in the Arctic «are immense». The Pew Environment Group recently examined oil spill response plans for operations in the Arctic and warned that the oil industry is «not prepared for the Arctic, the spill plans are thoroughly inadequate», adding that Arctic spill plans «underestimate the probability and consequence of catastrophic blowouts, particularly for frontier offshore drilling in the US Arctic Ocean.» Analysis for WWF found that industry proposals for assessing the risks of a spill in the Arctic were inaccurate, describing it as «imagineering, not engineering.» The US government estimated a one in-five chance of a major spill occurring over the lifetime of activity in just one block of leases in the Arctic Ocean near Alaska. The US Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that «there is no comprehensive method for clean-up of spilled oil in sea ice» and that recovery systems normally used to collect oil faced «severe limitations» due to extreme conditions in Alaska. Other critics have described Shell’s clean-up plans as being nothing more than a «glorified mop, bucket and brush brigade».

Shell – which was recently responsible for significant oil spills in Nigeria and the UK – says it will be able to remove up to 90% of any spilled oil in Alaska. This is an incredible assumption when you consider that the USGS estimates recovery levels of 1% to 20% in the Arctic. Only about 17% of oil was ever recovered after Deepwater Horizon, while the figure for Exxon Valdez was around 9%. Almost no baseline scientific research has been done on the offshore Arctic and we have very little understanding about how this potentially complex ecosystem operates or would respond to serious stress from, for instance, an oil spill. However, it’s clear that a major spill, with oil gushing unchecked for months on end in a region that has more coastline than the rest of the USA combined, would very likely have a catastrophic impact on local wildlife and fishing. The region is a vital habitat for species such as polar bears, musk ox, bearded and ribbon seals, bowhead and blue whales, and fish including Arctic char, halibut and salmon shark, while Alaska is home to birds such as the king eider, gyrfalcon, bald eagle and trumpeter swan.

vote now

1'032 votes

Current State and Demands on the Company

Shell must scrap its Arctic plans as well as its Tar Sands project.