Russian coastguards fired warning shots to prevent Greenpeace activists from climbing an oil platform in the Barents Sea and to stop the environmental organization’s Arctic Sunrise vessel, which entered the Northern Sea Route without permission.
“An attempt of seizure” of the Prirazlomnaya oil platform
was performed at 4:20 MSK on Wednesday, Russia’s Federal Security
Service (FSB) said in a statement.
“Four boats departed from the Arctic Sunrise, with two of them
approaching the platform at high speed and the other two sending
a barrel-like object in the direction of the platform. [Then] an
attempt was made to climb to the Prirazlomnaya with grapples and
ropes,” the statement said.
The coastguards, who were sent to intercept the
perpetrators,fired warning shots from an AK-47 rifle “due to
the real threat to the security of the Russian oil and gas
complex facility and insubordination to requests to abort the
illegal activity.”
Two of the activists were taken off the platform and delivered to
the Ladoga border patrol vessel, where “all the necessary
conditions for them to stay on board were created,” the FSB
stated.
The Ladoga also fired four warning shots from its cannon to
persuade the Arctic Sunrise – which was decorated with “Save
the Arctic” banners in both English and Russian – to abort
the illegal activity, but “the ship didn’t respond to the
signals.”
After several hours, the vessel finally agreed to follow the
commands of the borderguards, retreating 20 miles north of the
platform, Greenpeace wrote on its website.
The FSB noted that Arctic Sunrise, which sails under the Dutch
flag, “repeatedly performed provocative actions, threatening
the safety of the ships involved in the development of the
Russian sector of the Arctic shelf.”
According to Belikova, the activists’ initiative was of a
peaceful nature because they only wanted to attach banners to the
Prirazlomnaya platform, which called for an end to oil drilling
in the Arctic.
“Employing this level of force against a peaceful protest ship
is completely disproportionate and should stop immediately,”
Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace International's Arctic Project,
said.
Greenpeace also stated that the attempts to hamper its action
“won’t cancel the global movement for the protection of the
Arctic, which unites over 4 million people worldwide.”
The organization staged a similar protest at Prirazlomnaya in
August 2012. Saarela, who is now detained, was among those
participating in last year’s demonstration.
The platform, which is preparing to be put in operation, is the
first Russian project in the Arctic.
The country pins high hopes on offshore oil mining, with global
majors including ExxonMobil, Eni, and Statoil signing deals to
enter the Barents Sea area. Production from those companies is
not expected to begin before the 2020s.
But Greenpeace claims that “despite massive financing for
Prirazlomnaya, it isn’t able to guarantee safe production of
Arctic oil.”
Offshore safety has become a grave concern for ecologists after
BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, killing 11
workers and spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Mexican
Gulf.