PASADENA, Calif. (CN) - Greenpeace on Tuesday sought to overturn a court order barring it from disrupting Shell's Arctic oil program, a day after the oil giant received a permit to drill in the region.
In May, a federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska issued an injunction that creates so-called "safety zones" preventing the environmental activists from coming within 500 to 1500 feet of Shell's vessels.
The order came in response to a lawsuit Shell filed suit on April 7, one day after Greenpeace boarded a vessel roughly 750 miles northwest of Hawaii that was carrying a drilling rig bound for Seattle.
Then on Monday, the Obama administration granted a final permit allowing Shell to drill this summer in a region experts believe holds up to 13 percent of the world's oil reserves.
But conservationists are concerned that a large oil spill could cause a devastating environmental disaster in the pristine polar region.
Greenpeace appealed U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason's order creating the safety zones but faces an uphill battle in the Ninth Circuit, which upheld a similar injunction after Shell sued the group in 2012.
Greenpeace's attorney Matthew Pawa argued Tuesday morning that the group has a better chance of winning this time because Shell does not own the vessels and cannot make a valid claim of trespass.
"It's undisputed on this record, Shell does not own any of the boats," Pawa told the three-judge panel.
Pawa said that he questioned a Shell witness on that point, asking him if a captain on one of the boats would call Shell in the event of an emergency. He told the court that the witness had said no.
"It's undisputed on this record that Shell does not navigate [the vessels] anymore than if I were to hire a courier to go across town to Santa Monica and pick up a package. I'm not driving," Pawa said.
Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said he had "no idea" what point the attorney was trying to make.
"What does that prove? I mean, presumably if you have an emergency on board the skipper will do what's necessary. He won't call the owner of the vessel, right?" Kozinski said.
Pawa tried to explain that Shell did not have standing to bring the suit. But Kozinski shot the argument down.
"If you're an airline pilot, you're flying an airplane, you have an emergency, you're about to collide with another airplane or you have a drop in pressure - do they call American Airlines and say, 'What do I do?' The guy in charge of the vessel deals with the emergency. He wouldn't call anybody," Kozinski said.
Shell's attorney Jeffrey Leppo said the oil company had established "constructive possession" of the vessels.
"The fact that these [vessels] are under contract is entirely a red herring," Leppo said. "As the evidence demonstrated in the case, and as the district court held, Shell sets the mission of these vessels, it tells them what to do, where to go, when to do it. It informs them on how to replenish their supplies and it is in day-to-day control of these vessels."