How POTUS Is Involved In The Shell Oil Shitshow

A May 24 front–page article in The New York Times made clear that Obama got personally involved and fast–tracked Shell’s drilling permits. Shell did their part by launching a massive ad campaign and lobbying hard in the Beltway, while the company’s Alaska executive Pete Slaiby according to the Times “traveled to remote villages and chewed raw whale meat while listening to local concerns.” None of this was a surprise to us fighting this issue for years now. I have written extensively to stop Shell’s Arctic drilling since 2010; before that I used to talk about it in my lectures; and recently I edited an anthologyArctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point that will be published later this month. I’d urge you to get a copy of the book and please read the thirty–nine stories, including by Iñupiat activists Robert Thompson, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Earl Kingik, and Caroline Cannon, whose communities and culture would be most severely impacted by Shell’s Arctic drilling. For her courageous activism Caroline Cannon won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize this year. On June 21, I’ll give the book–launch lecture in Seattle at the Town Hall hosted by the Seattle Arts & Lectures; and Shell’s drill ships will be on their way from Seattle to the Arctic to begin drilling as early as mid July, or after a slight delay in August if heavy ice persists.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, “Barack Obama has become George W. Bush on steroids.” The article makes this reference with regard to Obama’s drone killing, but perhaps a similar thing could be said about his Arctic drilling that we must condemn.

We fought hard and defeated Bush’s repeated attempts to sell off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Big Oil—the most biodiverse conservation area in the circumpolar north that also supports two indigenous communities—the Gwich’in and the Iñupiat. But even during the super–oily Bush–era the National Research Council conducted an extensive and first of its kind Arctic study that was chaired by renowned scientist Professor Gordon Orions of the University of Washington in Seattle. The study concluded with a 288–page book Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope published by the National Academies Press (download free PDF). For the first time, all of us could understand in plain language the cumulative effects of more than three decades of oil drilling on land—on the ecology and human cultures of Arctic Alaska.

Know this now: despite repeated appeals by the Iñupiat people and conservationists, the Obama administration refused to do an Environmental Impact Statement, a thorough public process (italics added to emphasize key issues)—on the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas where Shell’s drilling would take place. Also, know that no comprehensive scientific study on the Arctic Ocean has been conducted by this administration, yet the most dangerous form of drilling is about to take place there—no one knows how to clean up oil from underneath the ice in the extremely harsh environment of the Arctic. The administration has rubber–stamped Shell’s permits after permits through a fast–track process; and while doing that tried to silence a top federal Arctic scientist Dr. Charles Monnett, who had exposed threat to polar bears caused by climate change, by suspending him last year, to promote Arctic drilling—The Guardian reported. Because of sustained complaints from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility the administration’s attempt backfired, and instead the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE)—the agency that suspended Monnett—came under investigation.

There is no infrastructure in the Arctic to respond to a spill. The nearest Coast Guard station is more than 1,000 miles away. During the Bush administration several federal administrators responsible for regulating offshore oil drilling operations “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives”—The New York Times reported. It was bad news but easy to understand.

It seems to me that a far more sophisticated approach is taking place about offshore drilling safety and regulations—monkeys are now in charge of protecting bananas! On March 7, The Hill reported, “Charlie Williams, a former scientist at Shell, will become the executive director of the Center for Offshore Safety.” The fine–named center was formed by Big Oil in the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Charlie Williams also serves in the BOEMRE’s Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee. He had worked for Shell for 40 years, and since 2005 was Chief Scientist—Well Engineering and Production Technology for Shell worldwide. No one has to sleep with anyone and create a PR mess—for the government and the corporation, but the cycle is complete—the Center for Offshore Safety (with a former top Shell employee at the helm) will no doubt assure the President that all is well in Shell’s well, “Don’t worry be happy”—while oil seeps underneath the Arctic ice for nine months, and Coast Guard employees sleep a 1,000 miles away. A perfect plan to kill the Arctic Ocean has been devised by Obama and Big Oil.

The Iñupiat activists have pointed out that Shell is a foreign oil company that will destroy their homeland and make huge profits. Indeed, Shell is a multinational company that is headquartered in the Netherlands. Shell, a foreign company to the Ogoni people has already destroyed their homeland, in the Niger delta. Unlike BP’sDeepwater Horizon that generated tremendous public outcry, we hear little to nothing in the US media and press about Shell’s atrocities in the Niger delta.

“The UN Environment Programme has announced that Shell and other oil firms systematically contaminated a 1,000 sq km (386 sq mile) area of Ogoniland, in the Niger delta, with disastrous consequences for human health and wildlife. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International and director of Environment Rights Action in Nigeria said the pollution had decimated the livelihoods of the Ogoni people.”—The Guardian reported in an August 4, 2011 article.