{"id":7688,"date":"2015-10-06T19:28:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T19:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/?p=7688"},"modified":"2015-10-06T19:28:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T19:28:54","slug":"shell-games-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/shell-games-in-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"Shell games in Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This piece is written by Robert Silvey<\/strong>, an organizer with Fossil Free California<\/a><\/strong>. The piece is orignally posted on\u00a0Fossil Free California\u00a0website here<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Shell<\/a>

Pick a shell, any shell. I bet you can\u2019t find the renewables.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In Alaska, there\u2019s good news and there\u2019s bad news. The good news first: last\u00a0week Royal Dutch Shell shut down its drilling rig<\/a> in the Chukchi Sea and gave\u00a0up its immediate dream of a great Arctic oil bonanza. After seven billion dollars of failed investment in a single dry well, Shell has now followed the lead of ConocoPhilips and Norway\u2019s Statoil, throwing in the towel, eating its losses, and heading home empty-handed.<\/p>\n

Good News<\/h2>\n

This is very good news indeed, for many reasons. First, exploration in the Arctic is fraught with graver dangers than in more benign climates. Frigid temperatures, ice, and punishing storms increase the likelihood of spills and other disasters. Second, the Arctic environment is fragile, and even a small mishap can affect flora and fauna for decades. The Exxon Valdez spill<\/a>\u00a0occurred over 26 years ago, but \u201cmany Alaskan beaches remain polluted to this day, crude oil buried just inches below the surface.\u201d And third, it is imperative that most of the oil already discovered remain in the ground, to avoid the global ravages of unleashed climate change. There is no reason to go looking for more, in the Arctic or anywhere else. #ShellNo.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a fourth reason this is especially good news. Shell\u2019s retreat\u00a0is the result, at least in part, of an energized climate movement. Marchers in New York, kayaktivists in Portland and Seattle, and divestment campaigners\u00a0in Sacramento have all played their parts in the rightful demonization of fossil fuel companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pleased that Shell has finally come to grips with the reality that drilling in the Arctic makes no sense,\u201d Andy Sharpless<\/a>, CEO\u00a0of the nonprofit Oceana, said. \u201cIt\u2019s not economically viable nor is it sensible from an environmental standpoint.\u201d\u00a0This is a dramatic victory for sanity and a hopeful step toward a world where no one needs to buy or burn oil. And thus a world where no company needs to look for more oil to sell.<\/p>\n

Bad News<\/h2>\n

But that\u00a0sustainable world is not just around the corner; it will\u00a0arrive only after\u00a0we chalk up\u00a0many more victories. In fact, Shell refuses to fold completely, claiming this is only a strategic retreat due to \u201cthe high costs associated with the project and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska.\u201d In other words, Shell implies, if\u00a0the supply-demand curve restores oil to its usual high price, and if\u00a0an Old Energy president moves into the White House, it\u2019s off to the races again\u2014in the Gulf of Mexico, through the Bakken shale, and all along the Alaska coast.\u00a0Looking for oil, looking for trouble.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the bad news.\u00a0In fact, Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas, made it clear that the company \u201ccontinues to see important exploration potential in the [Arctic] basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Shell is not the only oil behemoth that insists on beating\u00a0its head against an Arctic ice floe. The Italian company Eni recently\u00a0situated an enormous platform in the Barents Sea off Norway, and it is soon expected to begin producing 100,000 barrels of oil daily<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s there, it\u2019s connected, it\u2019s done. It\u2019s starting in a few weeks,\u201d reported a company insider.<\/p>\n

Empty Promises<\/h2>\n

Shell, too, plans to continue exploring for more oil.\u00a0CEO Ben van Beurden<\/a>\u00a0does admit that \u201cdangerous levels of global warming above 2\u00b0C will occur unless CO2<\/sub> is buried or reserves are kept in the ground.\u201d But he\u2019s still holding\u00a0out unreasonable expectations that\u00a0carbon capture and storage will prove economical, and therefore that Shell is justified in a\u00a0continuing search for\u00a0new sources of oil:<\/p>\n

There will still be a need for hydrocarbons for years to come, and the decline in existing production is always going to be faster than the decline that the most successful [low carbon] policies can create. There is always going to be a need for investment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Van Buerden does nod in the direction of solar and wind energy, promising that Shell will obtain\u00a0a \u201cvery, very large segment\u201d of its earnings from renewable power\u2014but only by the end of the century. The company\u2019s current green investment is just\u00a03 percent of its annual capital budget (including biofuels), and van Buerden expects renewables\u00a0will not begin to become important until\u00a0after 2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Economist Nicholas Stern, author of the influential 2006British government report<\/a> on the economics of climate change, says\u00a0that Shell and other hydrocarbon companies are badly mistaken. Renewable energy is fast becoming competitive, he points out, and people will increasingly insist\u00a0on policies to hold global warming to 2\u00b0C<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[The oil companies] do not believe the world will be wise enough to follow policies that can hold the world to 2\u00b0C and are asking us to bet against the world \u2026 telling us that we won\u2019t do what we\u2019ve set out to do and that it is a safe bet to bet that we won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We have to try to show them that they are wrong and that we can get the world\u2019s people to insist that we must follow those policies. We must try to build pressure to try to make that 2\u00b0C assumption correct and the forecast of the energy companies wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One way to build that pressure, Stern adds, is to divest from\u00a0fossil fuel\u00a0stocks\u2014and\u00a0to positively keep stocks or invest in companies that take\u00a0responsible action on climate change.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t include Shell, which remains\u00a0oblivious to the real dangers and the required urgency. If it\u2019s\u00a0really turning itself\u00a0into a green energy company, Shell is\u00a0moving much too slowly to preserve the Arctic\u2014or to preserve the rest of\u00a0the planet.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece is written by Robert Silvey, an organizer with Fossil Free California. The piece is orignally posted on\u00a0Fossil Free…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}