Royal Dutch Shell's Polar Pioneer, a semi-submersible offshore drillship, at the Port of Seattle.

Today is a good day: Shell announced that it is cancelling its 2012 Arctic drilling program! 

From asking to exceed air pollution limits to a damaged oil spill containment dome, Shell showed that it is not prepared to drill in the Arctic safely.

Let’s savor the moment. This is a huge day for millions of people around the world who took action to protect the Arctic from Big Oil.

But let’s be clear. The fight is far from over. We still have a lot of work to do to protect the Arctic’s oil and gas resources from industrial exploitation.

After investing more than $4,500,000,000 and seven years, Shell shows no signs of abandoning its long-term plans to drill for oil off the Alaskan coast. In fact, Shell has declared that it will continue drilling shallow “top holes” until the arrival of winter sea ice. “Top holes” are the initial stages of oil wells and Shell is racing to drill as many of these as possible in hopes that it will be able to drill deeper in search of oil next year.

Today, we savor this victory. Tomorrow, we’ll get back to work.

Thank you for taking action and supporting us!