By Carey Restino
This week, one of the companies Shell Oil hired to drill in the Arctic in 2012 — Noble Drilling — was fined $12.2 million and plead guilty to eight felony offenses for environmental and safety violations aboard its vessels, most of which occurred when it was in Alaska.
To those who followed Noble Drilling’s calamitous path through the state two years ago, the news that this company was guilty of gross negligence comes as little surprise. While much of the inner workings aboard the drill ships Noble Discoverer and the Shell-owned-but-Noble-managed Kulluk were hidden from the public eye, even the layperson on shore could see there were issues.
Are we to believe that Shell had no idea what kind of practices were in place when it invited these companies into the waters Alaskans depend on to feed their families and support our economy?
Here’s the bottom line. Companies operate in this grossly negligent way in Alaska because we, the state, and the federal government, let them. We endorse their activities in the hopes that they will make us rich. In most of the state, we don’t put comprehensive safeguards in place that guarantee companies will act in a way that respects our land and waters as we do. We tell them what we want them to do and then hope they will do it. And guess what. They don’t. We learned that with the Exxon Valdez oil spill but even that lesson has been largely forgotten.
So here’s a challenge to Shell, to the supporters of offshore drilling in Alaska, and to our newly elected governor and administration — send Noble Drilling home. The best predictor of future action is past action and we now know half of that equation. Noble Drilling should be sent packing for disrespecting the valuable waters of Alaska time and again. Quick. Before we forget.
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image credit nytimes.com
