EDITORIAL Greenpeace and spar oil

It is now accepted fact: The obsolete Brent loading spar, which Shell U.K. Exploration & Production wanted to sink in the deep Atlantic off Scotland, does not contain 5,500 metric tons of oil.

For more than 3 months it has been merely a factnot an accepted onethat there is nowhere near that much oil inside the vessel. Shell has insisted that the spar contains as little as 50 tons of sludge, most of it sand. Although the company occupies the world's best position from which to render such an estimation, its pronouncements could not be popularly accepted as fact as long as an entity speaking with higher moral authority made contrary claims.

How much oil?

That entity, of course, is the activist group Greenpeace. When Greenpeace proclaims the existence of 5,500 tons of oil in a piece of equipment awaiting disposal, all right-thinking peoples must behave as though it were so, denials of the equipment owner notwithstanding.

So right-thinking peoples of Europe last June boycotted Shell products, issued bomb threats, and set fire to Shell property. European heads of state wailed about this ominous threat to the seas. Television viewers watched Greenpeace members climb aboard the spar while it was under tow to its intended disposal site. And Shell, to the enduring consternation of the U.K. government, relented.

Such is the power of moral authority, and Greenpeace works hard for it. Its members flout the law. They perform dangerous, juvenile stunts. They make their antics easy for journalists to cover.

Poor Shell, then. All it had on its side of the argument were operating experience, engineering skill, scientific studies, laws of trespass and safety at sea, and permits from the U.K. government. Resisting higher moral authority with no more than that is like fighting fire with a handful of dry straw.

Then last week, with the spar moored in a Norwegian fjord and Shell assessing disposal alternatives, Greenpeace corrected the record. When the group's crackerjack researchers assessed oil amounts in the spar, it turns out, they made a measurement error that threw off findings by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Lord Peter Melchett, Greenpeace executive director, wrote a letter of apology to Shell U.K. Chairman Christopher Fay. But he still doesn't think Shell should scuttle the spar in 6,000 ft of water 150 miles from shore.

Some apology. It accepts Shell's assertion about how little oil remains in the spar and asks: So what? To Greenpeace, reversal on a huge issue of fact is no reason to alter extremist conclusions. The group surrenders no moral high ground and concedes none of the righteous authority that it wields so skillfully, so destructively, so free from any perceptible measure of popular doubt.

Of course it doesn't. No person or group ever gives up power without a struggle. And it is power that is at stake here. Doubters of that claim should ask Shell.

Greenpeace possesses the power to persuade and deploys it recklessly. Persuasion should be grounded in some reasonable version of truth, and truth must emerge from facts. Greenpeace truth derives from the willingness of group members to take personal risks for a cause in front of cameras. Facts in the Greenpeace scheme of things yield to adventure. They have more to do with what Greenpeace can trick people into accepting than with what it can technically prove.

The losses

Now everyone has lost something in the spar fiasco. Shell has lost a lot of money. The environment has lost the safest known method for disposal of spar-type structures. And Greenpeace has lost credibility.

One gain remains possible. If pronouncements by Greenpeace and other extremist groups begin to receive the critical analysis they deserve, science might eclipse drama in environmental politics. Such a turn would be especially welcome on the European continent and very good for Planet Earth.