Port Of Seattle Votes To Delay Arrival Of Shell Oil Rigs, But The Fight’s Not Over Yet

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CREDIT: AP

In response to mounting pressure from protesters and public officials, the Port of Seattle voted Tuesday to ask for a delay in the arrival of Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs.

The vote itself does not delay the arrival of the rigs, nor does it rescind the lease that the Port of Seattle signed earlier this year. Instead, the vote says that Shell’s use of the leased area — a 50-acre site near downtown Seattle — “should” be postponed “pending further legal review,” the New York Times reports. The vote also asks the local company that would host Shell, Foss Maritime, to delay harboring Shell’s equipment.

In early January, the Port of Seattle announced it had agreed to lease 50 acres of the 156-acre Terminal 5 to Foss, whose client is Shell. The agreement is worth $13.17 million over two years, according to the Seattle Times. Under the agreement, Shell would use the Seattle terminal as a home port for its Arctic drilling vessels — which include two Arctic drilling rigs and multiple tugboats, icebreakers, and environmental-response vessels — during late summer and winter. Following public announcement of the agreement, several environmental groups filed lawsuits with the Washington state court, alleging that the deal doesn’t comply with the terminal’s intended use as a container terminal, not a home port.

The vote to delay Shell’s arrival in Seattle comes just one day after the Obama administration granted Shell conditional approval for its plan to begin exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer. Under Shell’s current plan, six exploratory wells would be drilled about 70 miles northwest of Wainwright, Alaska.

In allowing Shell to move forward with its plans, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) cited newly-released safety regulations for drilling in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean, which require companies to have plans in place should a spill or blowout occur. But environmental groups worry that the Arctic is too remote — and the weather there too unpredictable — to make drilling a safe bet. In the BOEM’s own analysis of the environmental impact of Shell’s plan, the agency acknowledged a 75 percent chance of a spill greater than 1,000 barrels. Residents of Wainwright, Alaska — a majority of whom are indigenous Inupiat whalers — say that a spill would devastate their way of life.

“The Arctic isn’t just a place of polar bears,” Wainwright Mayor John Hopson told the Port of Seattle Commission on Tuesday. “It’s a home, my home.”

The Port of Seattle’s vote follows a wave of public pressure from protesters and city officials, including Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who announced last week that the port must obtain city permits before mooring of Shell’s vessels or rigs could begin. Last Thursday, around a dozen activists took to Elliot Bay in kayaks to protest the port’s agreement with Shell. Tuesday evening, another dozen protesters in kayaks paddled into the Puget Sound near Everett, a town some 30 miles north of Seattle, to meet the first of Shell’s oil rigs as it arrived. There is another protest planned for this Saturday, and organizers hope that more than 1,000 protesters in kayaks or small boats will participate.

“One thing is clear or has become clear to me, is that this lease has become an increasing distraction to the Port of Seattle,” John Creighton, a commissioner who supported asking to delay Shell’s mooring, said.

Representatives for both Foss Maritime and Shell told the New York Times that the commission’s decision would not stall their plans. In an email to the New York Times, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said that the company would begin moving the rigs into the Puget Sound this week.

“If we decide to change our plans, we’ll make that call,” Smith said. “But for now, the plan is to move the rigs and begin loading them out in the days ahead.”

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