Oil Company Foots Bill to Cleanup After Environmentalist Protest Damaged the Environment

Environmentalists in Seattle recently mounted a protest against the Obama administration’s allowance of oil drilling in the arctic. As we reported, some 700 self-described “kayaktivists” hypocritically swarmed a Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig on petroleum-made kayaks. But the hypocrisy doesn’t end there.

The environmentalists actually caused $10,000 worth of damage and pollution to dive park where their protest was organized. Making this a complete public relations nightmare for the enviros, Shell, the company they were protesting, has generously footed the bill for the cleanup.

As part of their protest, enviros floated a protest barge they billed “The People’s Platform” or the “Solar Barge.” The problem is they used gigantic cement blocks, cables, and chains to anchor the barge. When it was time to go they simply cut the barge free, leaving the anchoring structures submerged in the dive park.

Koos du Preez, with Seattle’s branch of Global Underwater Explorers, a nonprofit aquatic conservation group, explained that anchors had become tangled around key structures of the dive park.

“The Solar Pioneer barge dropped a couple of big mooring blocks right in the middle of a dive park,” du Preez said. “They had mooring cables attached to the barge; there were big tidal swings and with those tidal swings they wrapped around structures frequently visited by divers and also house marine life.”

After reviewing the incident, the Department of Natural Resources ordered all blocks and cables removed from the park. Each cement block is estimated to weigh between 2,000-4,000 lbs. The entire effort was estimated to cost around $10,000.

While initial plans involved billing the protest organizers, the idea was abandoned because of the price tag. “The operation was very costly and the activist group, I suspect, did not have that much resources to clean up the dive park,” du Preez said

That’s when GUE took a shot in the dark and sent a letter to Shell, the company’s whose oil barge protestors had swarmed that day.

“One of our members took a long shot and dropped an email directly to the CEO, Ben van Beurden, at Shell,” du Preez said. “We didn’t think much of it at the time, but low and behold, we get a call from Shell in Alaska. Our email somehow bounced around in the upper echelon of Shell.”

The oil giant was eager to help. Shell, together with Foss Maritime and the assistance of the owner of Solar Barge who had leased it to the protesters, paid for and coordinated the cleanup efforts.

It leaves you wondering, if not for the corporations, who would save the earth from the environmentalists?