Kayaktavists Take Over Seattle’s Port to Protest Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Rig
Mother Jones
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Seattleites took a dramatic stand, er paddle, against Arctic oil drilling on Saturday afternoon. Against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest city’s skyline, around 200 activists, local Native Americans, and concerned citizens took to kayak and canoe and surrounded a giant, Arctic-bound Royal Dutch Shell oil drilling rig currently making a layover in the Port of Seattle.
Despite the oil giant’s rocky history in the Arctic region, last Monday the Obama administration conditionally approved Shell’s summer plans to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea, north of Alaska. Environmentalists are not happy, and neither are many in Seattle, whose port has become a home base for the two Shell oil rigs’ operations. The Port of Seattle’s commissioners took heat for their controversial decision to lease one of its piers to Shell, tying the progressive city to fossil fuel extraction and the potential for environmental catastrophe in the Arctic.
As the first of the towering oil rigs arrived in Elliott Bay late last week, a group of “activists, artists, and noisemakers” calling themselves ShellNo organized a series of protests to welcome the oil company. The “Paddle in Seattle” yesterday drew an impressive flotilla of kayaks, canoes, and boats into the Duwamish River, which feeds into the Elliott Bay, to surround the Cost-Guard-protected rig. Below is a roundup of Tweeted pictures taken by people on the scene:
‘Paddle in #Seattle’ protesters gather against #Shell oil rig. (Mark Harrison / ST) Story: http://t.co/glrr6C8cit pic.twitter.com/u3tJIgm2Hv
— Seattle Times Photo (@SeaTimesPhoto)
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Kayaktavists Take Over Seattle’s Port to Protest Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Rig
