This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

At least 200 Seattle environmental protesters blocked the entrance to a terminal in Seattle’s port on Monday where a massive Royal Dutch Shell drill rig is temporarily resting on its way to explore for oil in Alaska this summer.

The 400ft long, 355ft tall Shell rig, named Polar Pioneer, has witnessed at least three staged environmental protests since it arrived since it arrived in the port of Seattle on Thursday afternoon.

Seattle 'kayak-tivists' take on Shell in battle over Arctic oil drilling Read more

“The Polar Pioneer is the most potent symbol we have of the climate crisis and of the kind of corporate capitalism that is driving the climate crisis system,” said Ahmed Gaya, a Seattle resident speaking by telephone from the scene where he was participating in the port blockade.

Gaya said demonstrations started at 7am PT on Monday, with hundreds of protesters marching from Harbor Island to Terminal 5 where the Arctic-bound Shell rig is located.

A port of Seattle spokesman, Peter McGraw, said people were working out of Terminal 5, but another port terminal, 18, had shut down its operations ahead of the planned demonstration.

Gaya, who described Monday’s protests as “festive” with families and children attending, hip-hop groups rapping, and folk stars singing, said the day’s events were but “one step in a campaign of massive response to stop the expansion of fossil fuels here and around the world”.

Many across different environmental and non-environmental groups in Seattle’s notoriously progressive community have mobilized around the issue of Arctic drilling and climate change in recent months, with Seattle’s mayor openly opposing Shell’s presence in the port.

In the next few weeks, the Polar Pioneer rig will be joined by a slightly smaller Noble Discoverer rig – also destined for Arctic exploration with Shell.

But its smaller size does not make it any less worrying, said Cassady Sharp, a Greenpeace media officer in Seattle.

The Noble Discoverer is the same rig that forced Shell out of the Arctic in 2012 amid a number of disastrous communication and security failures.

Shell has spent $6bn in its Arctic oil exploration bid, and seems to have no plan to stop – whatever activists say.

Despite a government report this year stating a 75% likelihood of one or more oil spills in the Arctic over the next 77 years were exploration allowed to go forward, Shell was effectively given the go-ahead for Arctic exploration by the Obama administration last week.

And Seattle, with its colorful kayaks and singing activists, has become its reluctant Arctic base.