A very punny screenshot from the organizers' website. sHellNO.org
Not only is Shell's arctic drilling fleet expected to cause catastrophic impacts to the Arctic Ocean, it apparently causes problems in local waters where ever it goes.
Vice News reports:
A drill ship at the heart of Shell's hunt for Arctic oil flunked a Coast Guard inspection last month when a piece of anti-pollution gear that already cost its owner millions in fines failed again.
The Coast Guard held the Noble Discoverer in Honolulu for a day until engineers could repair the device that separates oil from the water in the ship's bilges, said Lt. Scott Carr, a spokesman for the service. The April 23 inspection occurred less than five months after vessel owner Noble Drilling pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges and paid $12.2 million in fines, partly for dumping oily water overboard when the same machine didn't work.
"They attempted to fix it. They couldn't get it fixed," Carr told VICE News. "They couldn't get it operating, and they were given a detention hold. Then they got the part, got it fixed, and got it out the door."
The 514-foot ship is now en route to Seattle, where Shell plans to muster another expedition into the remote Chukchi Sea off Alaska. It will be the multinational oil giant's first attempt to drill there since the ill-fated summer of 2012, when Noble Discoverer was plagued by engine trouble and the drill platform Kulluk ran aground in a storm at the season's end.
The drill ship Noble Discoverer whose operators just pleaded guilty to 8 environmental and maritime felonies and paid $12.2 million in fines and community service due to the drilling rig Kulluk. a 266-foot conical drill barge breaking free of its lines while being towed back to port in Seattle after a 2012 summer season of drilling for oil off the coast of Alaska. Troubles were compounded when the tow vessel, the Aiviq, lost all four of its engines due to possible fuel contamination, and the drill rig was briefly adrift.
Apparently, Noble Drilling (U.S.) LLC has not corrected the problem of it's oil water separator (OWS). "The OWS is supposed to prevent oil-contaminated water from being dumped overboard, but the Noble Discoverer used an impromptu, uncertified pollution system instead, dumped stuff overboard anyway, and hid it from the Coast Guard. The piece of equipment that failed in Hawaii? The OWS." reports the Stranger.
The DOJ in a press release on 12-8-14, noted some of the terms of the plea agreement.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Noble admits that it knowingly made false entries and failed to record its collection, transfer, storage, and disposal of oil in the Noble Discoverer’s and the Kulluk’s oil record books in 2012. Oil record book entries falsely reflected that the Noble Discoverer’s Oil Water Separator (OWS) was used during periods of time when in fact the OWS was inoperable. Under the International MARPOL protocol and the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, all overboard discharges must pass through an operating OWS to insure that water pumped overboard does not contain more than 15ppm of oil.
Noble also admits that it failed to log numerous transfers and storage of machinery space bilge water and waste oil and failed to log that the Noble Discoverer’s oil content meter audible alarm was nonfunctional. Noble also made modifications to the Noble Discoverer’s new OWS system after the OWS system passed inspections by the Classification Society and the U.S. Coast Guard. Noble did not inform the U.S. Coast Guard or the Classification Society of the modifications and did not receive an International Oil Pollution Prevention certificate that documented the unapproved decanting system, the increased storage, or the new OWS piping arrangement.
Noble had problems managing the bilge and wastewater that was accumulating in the engine room spaces of the Noble Discoverer. This and other conditions led to a number of problems. Noble devised a makeshift barrel and pump system to discharge water that had entered the vessel’s engine room machinery spaces directly overboard from the Noble Discoverer without processing it through the required pollution prevention equipment as required by law. Noble failed to notify the Coast Guard about this system, and took steps to actively hide the fact that it was being used. These false and missing record entries and the use of the illegal overboard discharge system all violated the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.
In the factual basis of the plea agreement, Noble also admits that it negligently discharged machinery space bilge water from the Noble Discoverer into Broad Bay, Unalaska, on July 22, 2012. While anchored in Dutch Harbor, the Noble Discoverer’s bilge holding tank 27S overflowed and went overboard, creating a sheen in Broad Bay.
In Washington state a three-day-long "festival of resistance" against Shell's presence in Seattle between May 16 and May 18 is planned.
"We are taking action against Shell because we are fighting for the lives of people facing the brunt of climate change, in countries such the Philippines, Vanuatu, Maldives, and Tuvalu," Bayan-USA Pacific Northwest co-coordinator Katrina Pestaño said in a statement.