Shell’s Monstrous New Arctic Plan

by Nick Young, Greenpeace

I thought you should read this message from Vasily, whose home and future in Russia was destroyed by oil drilling:

“My name is Vasily, and I’m 52 years old. I grew up in the forest, surrounded by pine trees and the reindeer we raise. My parents, and my parents’ parents, always lived in the forest with what it gave us". 

"But when I was finishing school, the oil companies came. They burned the pine forests and contaminated the water with oil spills. They scarred the land with roads and destroyed the reindeer pastures". 

"Because of them, my children have been born into a different world. I won’t be able to leave them the traditions that my parents left me. My children will grow up without the forest – this is the reality the oil industry has left us.”

The same oil companies that have brought destruction to Vasily’s home region of Khanty-Mansiyskin northern Russia are now trying to drill in the Arctic.  

Over 3 million people around the world have already joined us to stop companies like Shell from destroying the Arctic with oil spills because, like drilling in the very deep seas of Aoteaora, the Arctic is a step too far.

Click here to sign the petition to Save the Arctic now. 

Earlier this year, Shell was forced to quit drilling in the US Alaskan Arctic after a series of dangerous and humiliating failures. 

Increasingly desperate to plunder the fragile region in any way possible, now Shell has partnered with notorious Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom to access the Arctic through Russia, where laws are lax and corruption is rife.

This disturbing partnership is an oil spill in the making. Only last month a broken pipeline in northern Russia sent a river of oil rushing toward the Arctic Ocean, forcing local Indigenous people to try to clean it up with their bare hands. 

After years of spills, much of Siberia has mutated into an environmental catastrophe zone. This is a glimpse of the Arctic’s future if we fail to act. The actual consequences of an offshore spill there would be a thousand times worse.

Help us stop Shell and Gazprom before the drilling starts. Click here to sign the petition.

Thanks for your support,

- Nick and the whole crew at Greenpeace