The Viral-Ready Occupation of Shell's Arctic Oil Rig

Monday night, in a dangerous, dizzying maneuver, a team of ​six Greenpeace activists boarded a Shell oil rig bound for the Arctic. The impressive feat was recorded in a gut-churning video that makes clear the stakes of grappling onto a 100-foot free-floating monstrosity on the open seas.

The team proceeded to scale the rig, called the Polar Pioneer, and affix themselves to its underside, where they spent the night. Greenpeace is protesting the oil giant's plans to drill in the Arctic later this year, which were ​just approved by the Obama administration.

The stunt—and especially the slick, well-shot video that easily flagged the attention of bloggers and newsrooms around the country—marks another step in the evolution of the activist group's outreach (​Livefeeds, GIFs!). It also ​won prominence in a crowded news cycle, which is precisely what these campaigns are designed to do.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to chat with one of the climbers via satellite phone, while she was staring out at the frosty sunrise from her petrol-encrusted perch in the middle of the Pacific.

It was 4:30 AM for Aliyah Field, a Greenpeace volunteer and extreme climber from Maine, when our connection finally went through. That connection wasn't great, so if I ever slightly misquote Field here, hopefully she'll forgive me after she safely descends the rig—or is forced down by Shell, or arrested; a fate she's willing to accept.

"I am on the edge, underneath the drilling platform," she said. "I'm 30 meters, maybe 40 meters above the water; I'm on the edge. I see a lot of industrial equipment: large, oversized, 4-inch diameter steel cables running from top to bottom. It's still quite dark. Some of the first daylight is just creeping up over the water." She sounds calm.

I ask her why she's there, of course.

"Shell has a terrible record of going into places to drill for oil," she said. She said she feels a personal need to go to beautiful places that are in danger, to do whatever she can to stop a disaster from unfolding: "Scientists have said that a spill would be nearly impossible to clean up, and that the likelihood of a spill is 75 percent." And boarding a towering oil rig from the boat, in motion, and climbing it straightaway?

"I am an extreme climber," Field said, "but I've never done anything quite like this." She laughs when I tell her the video of her approach was crazy. "It was a little nerve-wracking to come up to a vessel of this size and board it," she said, an understatement if there ever was one.

Travis Nichols, a Greenpeace spokesperson currently on drier land, further explains the strategy behind the campaign. "If Shell gets what it wants, the company will begin drilling in 100 days," he wrote me in an email. "As we saw in 2012, Shell cannot be trusted to operate safely in Alaska." (Shell's previous attempt to drill in the Arctic was a colossal, well-publicized failure.)

"We need to make sure that as many people as possible hear about this, because it affects us all. Less Arctic sea ice means more climate disruption. More superstorms, more drought, more severe weather everywhere. Arctic drilling will make all of this worse."

"The activists are on the Polar Pioneer to expose Shell's desperate hunt for oil and the impact its reckless plans will have for the Arctic and the global climate," he added. "The activists are there to show Shell that a movement is building across the world who will stand against its plans to open up the icy waters of the Arctic, a movement that they cannot ignore."

They probably won't. Historically, authorities have intervened to ply Greenpeace protesters off oil company rigs. And the activists say they're not leaving until they're forced off, or, I guess, Shell calls off its bid to drill in the Arctic.

"I think there's a lot of different ways this could end. I don't know if getting arrested is in the cards or not, but certainly we're all willing to accept the consequences," Field said. "We want Shell to listen to the people, and for the people to speak up. We're up here trying to amplify their voices."

The satellite phone will be on, the Twitter feeds will be chirping, and high-res, watermarked images will continue to proliferate from the six young people clinging to the side of the massive oil vessel. As long as they're up there, we're going to know about it.

"We're going to stay as long as it takes," Field said, "we're committed to seeing this through."