Shell's Arctic-Drilling Fleet at West Seattle’s Terminal 5
The Seattle Port Commission is seeking a passage to calmer waters after facing protest and song over its lease of Terminal 5 to provide a staging area for Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic oil drilling fleet.
The city’s Department of Planning and Development will “review, investigate and determine” whether the port’s plan to play host to Shell — or, to be exact, Foss Maritime — is allowed under the current shoreline substantial development permit granted to Terminal 5.
The impacts that worry environmental groups are more than 2,000 miles away for Seattle.
Shell is returning to the Arctic this summer, seeking to rescue an investment that has already cost the oil giant $5.8 billion in lease sales and equipment.
A motion, set for vote at a future Commission meeting, would require that Shell’s fleet be gone within two years. It also promises no more quickie deals removed from public scrutiny. And the Commission would take over all future details of the controversial deal with Foss Maritime, which services Shell’s ships.
“We are not changing terms of the lease,” said Seattle Port Commissioner Tom Albro. “We are, essentially, owning the lease as an executive action and determining what will happen there.”
Initial reaction from groups organizing protests — that packed Tuesday’s commission meeting with 200 anti-Shell activists — was negative. The motion, introduced late Tuesday, directs Port management to ensure that “tenant” — Shell and Foss Maritime — “vacates the premises at the end of the initial term of two years unless instructed otherwise by future public action of the Commission.”
