Seattle Eco-Activists Confront Shell Oil Rig

Environment campaigners in Seattle have confronted a giant oil rig about to search for fossil fuel energy in the Arctic Ocean.

Two dozen activists in kayaks paddled out to meet Royal Dutch Shell's Polar Pioneer in Elliot Bay as it loaded crew and supplies for a trip to the Chukchi Sea some 200km north west of Alaska.

Campaigners in the Pacific Northwest are sensing a shift in the politics of fossil fuel production and are mobilising against projects they say would transform the region into a gateway for oil and coal exports to Asia.

Activist Paul Adler, 52, joined the group as they unfurled a banner stating: Seattle Loves The Arctic, and Arctic Drilling = Climate Chaos.

He said: "The environmental issues are big and this is an opportunity to present a David versus Goliath position, the people and the planet versus Shell, and create a national debate about drilling in the Arctic."

"These proposals have woken a sleeping giant in the Northwest," said Eric de Place, policy director for Sightline Institute, a liberal Seattle think-tank. "It has unleashed this very robust opposition movement."

The tiny boats were dwarfed by the rig which rises 300ft (90 metres) out of the water and can drill to a depth of 25,000 ft.

Shell cleared a major bureaucratic hurdle on Monday when the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the multi-year exploration plan.

Spokesman Curtis Smith called the approval an important milestone that "signals the confidence regulators have in our plan".

The company's mission to the Chukchi Sea continues their efforts to open new oil and gas reserves in one of the world's most dangerous maritime environments.

Hurricane-force winds and 50ft (15 metre) waves can quickly threaten even the sturdiest ships in the seas off Alaska.

Shell's last attempt to explore for oil in the region ended badly. The Noble Discoverer and the Kulluk - a rig Shell spent hundreds of millions of dollars to customise - were stranded by equipment failures and the crew had to be rescued.

But the company says it learned from the experience and can safely drill in the Chukchi Sea, as well as the Beaufort Sea, an even more remote stretch north of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.