Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A US judge in Anchorage has slapped a massive accumulating fine on Greenpeace of $2500 per hour, rising to $10,000 / hour, for every hour Greenpeace activists block Shell Oil ship MSV Fennica from leaving Portland, to sail for Alaska.
According to Sky News;
A US judge has slapped a $US2,500 ($A3,426.77) fine on Greenpeace for every hour its activists continue to block a Shell Oil ship headed for Alaska on a drilling expedition.
The activists have been hanging from ropes since Wednesday from a bridge in Portland, Oregon’s main city, to prevent the departure of the MSV Fennica, a Shell icebreaker that was in town for repairs.
But federal judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city, ruled in the oil giant’s favour on Thursday, imposing the hourly fine until the protesters withdraw, a court official told AFP.
The fine will increase the longer the protest continues, according to the local KGW News.
Starting at 10am on Friday (0300 AEST on Saturday), Greenpeace will be fined $US5,000 an hour, increasing to $US7,500 an hour on Saturday and $US10,000 an hour from Sunday.
Greenpeace is a massive multi million dollar international organisation, with assets in the 10s of millions, so in principle they could laugh off even a $10,000 / hour fine for at least several weeks before feeling the financial strain. My guess is there may be some interesting discussions occurring now in Greenpeace HQ, about how much money they should burn to make their point.
Update
The MSV Fennica made it past the protestors at 6pm Thursday, according to Oregon Live.
Just before 6 p.m. Thursday, the controversial icebreaker MSV Fennica threaded through a hole cut by law enforcement in the wall of protesters suspended from the St. Johns Bridge.
…
A police Special Emergency Response Team officer rappelled over the bridge and cut the lines connecting the protesters dangling from the bridge. Then Portland Fire Bureau technical rescue teams moved in, with some firefighters going over the bridge’s edge and asking the protesters to voluntarily ease themselves down to waiting boats.
The first two protesters came down on their own but the third wouldn’t communicate. Firefighters connected two rope lines to his lines, removed his anchor and lowered him on their attached lines to a boat.
Their work opened a gap just wide enough for the Fennica’s safe passage.
Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/07/greenpeace_protesters_claim_sy.html
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These stunts will continue until December.
It is all part of a plan.
Imagine!
Greepeace parents of another newborn “burden on the planet”, (they’re ALL heart, aren’t they?)…..”Dr, what’s wrong with our child?” Dr…..”Your baby was born too prematurely, it has to go into one of these incubators to survive, & it will take a few weeks or even a month or two, we can’t be certain!” Parents….”Are you sure he will make it?”…..Dr….”I am sure he will, although maintenance staff tell us we’re running short of diesel fuel for the back-up generators, so me & all the maternity staff are really worried about all the power cuts we’ve been experiencing of late, so there’s a real risk that he may not make it! If we could ensure security of fuel supply we’d be far more confident! The thing is, it’s those protesters who are blocking the oil trucks at all the refineries stopping them making essential deliveries, are causing a real problem, people could start to die!”
We ALL know how hypocritical they all are, when push comes to shove, they’ll beg for fossil fuels, when it comes to their own, to hell with anyone else!
Agreed! If they got to the bridge by sail-boat/bicycle/on foot and their ropes were made of hemp as opposed to nylon or other man-made fibres, I might not view them with quite so much contempt.
Nylon and poly-type rope fibers are petroleum based.
Their protest would be more meaningful if they boycotted all petroleum products (like gasoline).
Did I not read here recently that there is, indeed, ice still up in the Arctic? Some group wanted to make a voyage up there and was blocked by the ice, which hasn’t disappeared as the warmists expected. If I am remembering correctly, there is still work for an icebreaker to do.
Ice is at 1980s levels in the Arctic Ocean and in eastern Hudson Bay a Canadian icebreaker had to cancel climate research to break ice so that settlements along the shore could be resupplied.
India has the right idea. The government has declared it an illegal organisation and frozen its bank accounts in that country.
Funny would be seeing their accounts seized and used to build more coal fired power stations.
All that would take would be a President who cares about the country to make it so.
Maybe next year
Sigh..
Greenpeace is obviously a bunch of idiots who break laws seemingly everywhere they go. But they are just a more activist group that represents a lot of folks who agree with their methods and their goals. After all, a lot of people send donations to them.
Consider this event. They wanted to keep one Shell Oil ship from leaving its berth and proceeding on its way toward Alaska because it was on a drilling mission. Greenpeace could fight Alaskan drilling or exploration in the courts, but it decided that illegal obstruction was the route to go. Greenpeace always chooses the illegal route.
As mentioned above, India decided that Greenpeace was an legal organization. I can’t see why more countries don’t take the same approach. Do the laws not matter to most countries?
Greenpeace could fight Alaskan drilling or exploration in the courts, but it decided that illegal obstruction was the route to go.
But they knew they’d get free publicity with a typical moron stunt, so they went with that. And probably got some increased donations/signups from the brain-impaired, easily-led and overly-emotional.
They should’ve mounted a windmill on the bow of the ship. Let them find out how the birds feel about large blades slicing through the air.
Don’t these people have real jobs?
No.
If I lived there, I think I’d give into the temptation to buy a drone with a camera and practice on their slalom course
Greenpeace should have a new moniker, GreenFleece.
I prefer “Greenpeeve”, peeve being an irritant.
Now Greenpeace can see if they can find another World Heritage Site to damage.
This is all going on down the road from me. It’s been a huge inconvenience for everyone in the city. The St. Johns Bridge is one of the arteries connecting the city, and the powers- that-be in Portland are simply letting these @ur momisugly#$%##!!! take over the bridge, closing it down to traffic – Mayor Charlie Hales has been holding the police back (he’s been involved with the Vatican’s climate agenda deal), and simply letting them prevent the ship from leaving. For those of you unfamiliar, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber was recently run out of office because his grafter girlfriend, Cylvia Hayes (something like twenty years younger than him), was busted peddling influence for her own green crusade (she’ is quoted as saying, “I don’t work for the state, I work for the Earth” – while not even being a state employee – just sleeping with the Governor). Among other scams, Ms Hayes is also known for having accepted several thousand dollars for a sham marriage to get an illegal immigrant citizenship status and spending the money on a pot grow operation. All the details are still pending but she also seems to be involved with one Mr. Tom Steyer – I suspect this is all part of a coordination between the governor’s offices of the three west coast states, OR, WA, CA, to allow disruption of the oil shipments going up and down the coast (Kitzhaber’s replacement, Kate Brown is even worse… and hasn’t seem to have been influenced by my fifteen page letter on the subject of AGW).
On a positive note, we here in Oregon are experiencing the hottest summer in years and these idiots dangling off the bridge are doing so in the first hundred-degree weather we’ve had since 2012. So, even though they seem to be successfully disrupting river (and road) traffic – they’re all baking in the sun and I’m sure it really sucks. A bit of a sweet irony.
Joel, as I replied to Jon above in the comments, my guess for a while has been that these type of NGOs (GP, Sierra, WWF, etc.) are getting funded by our competitors, especially the State competitors, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, etc. I have no proof, but think about it. Isn’t that what you’d do if you were a Saudi prince? I know that’s what I’d do if I was. (I’m not.)
@ur momisugly Joel, “they’re all baking in the sun and I’m sure it really sucks. A bit of a sweet irony.” in a way yep but hanging of that bridge for a few days in a fog bank and a relentless drizzle would make it even better.
If I were the oil companies, I would quit shipping oil products to cities like Seattle and Portland who are so anti-fossil fuel. Give them a few days without it and see who come crawling.
Why did they have to rescue them?
Sharks gotta eat same as worms.
If Shell Oil were an individual, they could get a restraining order against GreenPeace to cover all such harassment actions, which would trigger criminal charges immediately on the next violation. As it is, it seems to be the case that Shell has to take each action to court separately and get a judge to impose fines, which only start to apply if Green Peace continues the action. In other words, this stunt gets GreenPeace publicity and costs them nothing, while it costs Shell for the delay.
This is a guarantee that such actions will continue.
I’m curious if any attorneys can comment on this idea. It’s obviously not currently possible or Shell (along with everyone else) would have taken that route by now.
Shell should have grounds for a civil lawsuit to recover damages after the fact. This goes double if they already have another court ordering criminal fines for the same action.
These dopes-on-ropes just hate oil, for which they, personally have no use.
Oh, wait.
Anyone in or near Portland? This would be a great time to feed the birds on this particular bridge. Sea gulls will eat a variety of things but this calls for stinky bait shrimp.
OHH that is just a nasty thought. That being said I would send money for the shrimp purchase to anyone willing to do this to them the next time, but you would have to film it we need some stress relief. 🙂
Wouldn’t it be interesting if some anti-activist group gathered up a bunch of mangled, rotting bird carcases from windfarms and dumped them in the lobby of GreenPeace headquarters? Would any MSM reporters cover the story? Would local authorities arrest them? Would the ACLU represent them?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I’ve been wondering where to safely dispose of my burnt-out spiral light bulbs…
I think they should have attached a smooth cowling around the upper section of the superstructure so that the protesters would simply have slid around the sides of the departing ship. Or attached lines to pull them aside.
I might have some respect for the hanging and kayaking protesters if they used hemp rope, wooden kayaks and other natural materials in their prank.
But using primarily materials made from oil by-product for the their lame/brain scheme just demotes them from simple fools to hypocritical ignorant losers.
Lordy. Twits.
Yeah, they’d have eventually come down when their iPhone batteries died, and they couldn’t tweet any more.
To help pay the fines
Erect a Porta Loo where the ropes are attached and charge 10c a pee down the rope!
I say lower rotting chicken carcasses near them. Let them stew for a while with the sights and smells of rotting chicken. Not to mention the flies it would attract.
I did notice the above picture of them hanging from the structure by the ropes ( petro-chemical synthetic I would presume). Why not lash a cable at the top of their rope and use a winch to pull them up? If not onto the bridge, at least out of the way of the ship? Then I would have the captain take a sloooooooooow cruse under them and let them get a good whif of it’s exhaust…
Just say’n
A bit of background .,…
One of the games the greens have been playing up here in AK for decades is the delay, delay, delay game. They apply it against roads, bridges, tunnels, mines, literally any and everything possible to build (other than wind turbines). Construction season is fairly short in most of the state, May thru Sept here in ANC. So they time their obstruction so as to force whoever is doing the project to kick the can down the road another year and hope simply grind down the project in an endless series of delays that the courts at all levels are more than happy granting them.
Shell is in much the same boat in the Chukchi, as its drilling window is only a couple months long. The drilling permit from the Obama regime required all sorts of spill containment stuff to be present, much of it unnecessary, on site at all times while drilling. The icebreaker was one of the required items. Delay it enough, and Shell can’t drill this summer, leaving the next 10 months for the green lawyers to continue their lawfare effort against the permit.
Rumor up here on the Chukchi is that Shell thinks there is a LOT of oil up there. WIlder speculation suggests it is perhaps as much as Prudhoe. They spent billions already in exploration and don’t seem ready to pull back. Cheers –
Marc, as I have said several times above, my guess for a while has been that these type of NGOs (GP, Sierra, WWF, etc.) are getting funded by our competitors, especially the State competitors, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, etc. I have no proof, but think about it. Isn’t that what you’d do if you were a Saudi prince? I know that’s what I’d do if I was. (I’m not.)
I’m done with the repetitive comments. Dan
@ur momisugly Dan, there is a lot of proof that those entities are funding the NGO’s, I guess source it on the net, the info is there, I’ll try to connect over the next little while but it has been noted before on WUWT and even in the news.
Any experienced mariner knows that you do not get in the way of commercial vessels. That ship could have just as well run into the hanging idiots. They placed themselves in harms way, so why not fulfill their wishes. They asked for it
Not unlike the heroic chap who laid down in front of a slow-moving ammunition train leaving Oakland and lost both legs for his trouble. He figured for sure they’d stop. “He chose poorly.”
Suck it, Greenpeace.
I hope the get billed for the cost of the coast guard and firefighters who were needed to clear their illegal demonstration.