Greenpeace activists board Russian oil platform
Six environmental activists led by the head of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, stormed on Friday a Russian oil platform in the northern Pechora Sea to protest against drilling for oil in the Arctic, RIA Novosti reports.
The protesters traveled in three inflatable boats launched from Greenpeace’s ship, the Arctic Sunrise, currently touring the Pechora Sea, the environmental agency said on its website.
They successfully scaled the Prirazlomnoye platform despite being hosed down with icy water by platform staff and settled on the rig where the oilmen cannot reach them, putting up banners.
The activists have effectively blocked the platform’s operations because safety rules prohibit it from working with intruders on the rig, said Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia.
The activists, all skilled climbers hailing from Canada, Finland, Germany and the United States, are supplied to withstand a 10-day-long siege, said Chuprov.
The stock includes water and chocolate bars, he added.
The attacks are part of Greenpeace’s global campaign against drilling in the Arctic, said Chuprov, who supervises the watchdog’s energy projects in Russia.
“We want the mindless politicized race for the last droplets of oil to stop,” Chuprov said.
More than 1.5 million people from all over the globe have signed an online petition against oil exploration in the northernmost region in the planet. Environmentalists say oil spills in the Arctic can be almost impossible to clean and capable of ruining fragile local ecosystems for decades.
The economics of offshore oil exploration in the Arctic are also questionable, with costs of offshore Arctic oil being at $30 per barrel, compared to $7 for onshore oil, and infrastructure costs estimated at between $0.5 trillion to $1 trillion, Chuprov said.
Oil drilling in the Arctic is completely safe, the Arctic division of Gazprom, Prirazlomnoye platform’s owner, said on its official Twitter.
The company also said on Twitter that oil rig workers began negotiations with the protesters on Friday morning. Telephoned and emailed requests for comment from the platform’s operator, Gazprom Shelf Neft, went unanswered in time for publication.
Greenpeace launched its Arctic campaign in 2010, but this is the first time that Russian oil operators are the target of the group’s direct action.
Naidoo and several other volunteers staged a similar attack at an oil platform by the British company Cairn Energy in 2010. The event ended with his short-term arrest and deportation for the environmentalists, but also with the company wrapping its offshore Arctic operations. Greenpeace has also targeted Shell, which plans to drill for oil in Alaska.
Naidoo traveled to Moscow earlier this month, but failed to secure meetings with governmental officials. He said in an interview with RIA Novosti at the time that the watchdog was planning to focus more on grassroots activism and reserved the right to carry out acts of peaceful civil disobedience.
The stunt at Prirazlomnoye could be classified as hooliganism, punishable with up to seven years in prison in Russia, Chuprov said. Accusations of hooliganism aggravated by religious hatred have recently landed three members of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot for two years in prison over a “punk prayer” at a church.
Source: http://en.rian.ru/
