This time last year, the environmental groap Greenpeace scored a David-and-Goliath victory over the giant Shell Oil company. Greenpeace activists, playing to a worldwide television audience, boarded an oil storage buoy called the Brent Spar and temporarily halted Shell's plan to scuttle it in the deep Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland. Greenpeace claimed that the sunken rig--a 141-meter-long vertical steel tube that had served as a holding tank in the North Sea for 15 years--would pose a toxicthreat. The publicity prompted a widespread consumer boycott of Shell products, particularly in Germany, as a result of which the company gave up and towed the Brent Spar to Erfjord in Norway. Last week, a panel of scientists passed judgment on Greenpeace's claims--and both sides are claiming vindication.
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