Greenpeace activists boarded and “occupied” an oil giant Shell tanker headed for a depot off Scotland on Tuesday, the environmental organization said. Four activists approached the 51,000-ton facility from inflatable boats before docking and boarding the vessel. They held a banner that read “Stop Drilling. Start Paying” (Stop drilling. Start paying), according to images released by the NGO.
The ship was then just north of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, heading for a North Sea depot off Scotland. She leads an FPSO, a floating unit responsible for the production and storage of offshore oil or natural gas. “The peaceful protest aims to highlight the destruction of the climate on a global scale committed by Shell and the fossil fuel industry in general, who have not paid a penny for the damage they have caused,” Greenpeace said in a statement.
Eight new extraction wells
The four activists “now occupy the ship’s cargo,” it adds. They “have enough resources to occupy the platform for days.” The platform could allow Shell to unlock eight new extraction wells, enough to produce up to “45,000 barrels of oil a day,” Greenpeace laments. “We are mobilizing today because when Shell extracts fossil fuels, it causes a wave of death, destruction and displacement around the world,” said Yeb Saño, an NGO official quoted in the press release.
“Shell and the fossil fuel industry in general are bringing the climate crisis to our homes, families, landscapes and oceans.” For its part, the British-Dutch giant denounced, according to a spokesman quoted by The Guardian, an action “that raises real concerns about security, with a certain number of people boarding a moving ship in difficult conditions.” At the end of 2019, Shell, which is due to publish its annual results on Thursday, won a victory in Scottish courts that barred Greenpeace activists from approaching its platforms in the North Sea.
Source: BFM TV
