AMSTERDAM (AP) -
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is taking Greenpeace
International to court in an attempt to have the environmental
organization banned from holding any protest within 500 meters (1,640
feet) of any Shell property, or face a €1 million ($1.3 million) fine.
The suit at Amsterdam's
District Court Friday shows Shell aggressively taking the offensive to
protect its $4.5 billion investment in drilling for oil in the icy
Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska. A verdict is not expected for two
weeks.
Shell is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, while Greenpeace International is based in Amsterdam.
The oil company said in a
statement several of Greenpeace's recent actions have "have gone well
beyond the limits of acceptable protest."
"Shell continues to respect
the legitimate right of people to peacefully protest against the
activities we undertake to ensure the world's energy needs are met," the
statement said.
Shell asked for the ban to
go into effect immediately and last six months. Although Shell says the
ban it is seeking is limited to the Netherlands, Greenpeace spokesman
Aaron Gray-Block said Shell is also asking that Greenpeace International
not support such actions in other countries.
Greenpeace called the move a "legal sledgehammer to stifle public discourse."
The group argues that drilling in the Arctic is inherently risky and Shell's safety plans are inadequate.
But Shell has fought its
way through numerous environmental and safety challenges in the U.S.
licensing process before being granted two permits for exploratory
drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.
The company expects the projects eventually to create hundreds of jobs.
Greenpeace activists have
been involved in two attempts to thwart Shell-owned ships from traveling
to the Arctic. In May, a U.S. court ordered the organization to remain
at least a kilometer (around half a mile) away from any of Shell's ships
bound for Alaska, within 200 miles of shore in U.S. waters.
Greenpeace has protested
Artic drilling with other stunts around the world, but the trigger for
Friday's lawsuit was a Dutch demonstration on Sept. 14, in which
Greenpeace protesters blocked more than 70 Shell gas stations in the
Netherlands for several hours, draping banners and clamping gas pump
handles together with bike locks.
Fifteen people were arrested. Shell has not put forward any estimate of how much damage it suffered.
"Because Greenpeace
International doesn't operate alone, but is the spider in the web of
national and local organizations, our request includes that Greenpeace
inform its satellite organizations that it no longer supports protests
that are solely directed at causing Shell economic damage or that bring
human lives and the environment in danger," Shell's complaint said.
Greenpeace campaigner Ben
Ayliffe said Shell was "in no position to accuse others of being
reckless or unsafe," given the difficulties the company may face if an
offshore spill occurs in the Artic amid bad weather.
The past weeks have proved eventful for Shell's two Artic projects, which would be the first in those waters for years.
Drilling in the Chukchi was
delayed, first due to a dangerously large ice floe drifting toward its
movable platform, and then after a dome the company might use to help
contain any potential spill failed during a test overseen by the U.S.
Coast Guard.
Shell received the second
of its two final permits for exploratory drilling on Thursday from the
U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, for the Beaufort
project. On the same day, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data
Center announced the annual Artic summer sea-ice melt - the July-October
period that is Shell's opportunity for drilling - had reached the
greatest extent on record earlier this month, possibly as a result of
global warming.
But last week Shell said it
has scaled back ambitions for this season and will only drill "top
holes." Such holes don't reach down to the level where oil and gas is
located, but they can be turned into completed wells more quickly next
year.
Greenpeace and Shell have a
long history of conflict, most notably when activists occupied the
Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea in 1995, as part of a campaign
that eventually forced Shell to abandon plans to dispose of the platform
at sea.
