TIMELINE: Shell’s Year of Arctic Screwups

James.Stringer/Flickr; ReneS/Flickr

Last August, Shell got a long-awaited go-ahead from US regulators to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic. It’s a potential gold mine for the company—up to a fifth of the world’s untapped oil resources are in the Arctic. But instead of rolling in cash, Shell ended up getting rolled by one disaster after another, culminating in the crash in January of drilling rig and a subsequent investigation by the feds. And that was only the next act in a comedy of errors that’s been unfolding for over a year, and that finally ended—for now, anyway—this week, when the company announced it would “pause” its Arctic operations. Here’s a look back at Shell’s tumultuous run in the Arctic, featuring coverage by our Climate Desk partners:

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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