Environmental campaigners who yesterday stopped an oil platform from leaving Scotland to drill a deep water well have attached a purpose-built reinforced ‘survival pod' to its huge anchor chain and say they now have the means to continue their occupation for a month.
The Greenpeace activists launched boats from their ship Esperanza before towing the 2 metre diameter pod to the 228m long Stena Carron drill ship, anchored off the Shetland Islands. Two climbers who spent last night hanging above the waves in a tent suspended by ropes from the oil ship's anchor chain then attached the pod before it was lifted into place.
The deployment of the half-tonne survival pod comes the day before environment ministers from countries bordering the North-East Atlantic meet to discuss a German proposal to ban new deep water drilling. The UK government is sending a minister to the ‘OSPAR' meeting in Norway to block the proposal.
The rig, operated by US energy giant Chevron, was meant to be sailing for a site in the Lagavulin oil field before drilling an exploratory well in 500 metres of water in the Atlantic Frontier off Shetland. The survival pod was kept under wraps as the Esperanza left Aberdeen on Monday night to rendezvous with the activists occupying the anchor chain.
Two of the Esperanza crew are now secured inside the purpose built, reinforced survival pod, where they are protected from the elements and have supplies to last for at least a month. Leila Deen who will spend today - her 31st birthday - in the pod has just returned from the Arctic, where she witnessed first hand the impacts of burning oil on the climate. Deen said:
"An oil spill here would be a disaster and just as difficult to plug as the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Government has so far refused to stop issuing permits for ships like this to drill. So that's why we're in this pod, equipped with supplies to last for a month. We will continue to block risky oil exploration until the Government puts a moratorium on new deep sea drilling."
She continued:
"When the politicians meet in Norway tomorrow they can take a huge step towards taking us beyond oil and embracing a clean energy future by banning deep water drilling. If they don't, they'll be held responsible when a BP-style disaster hits the North Sea."
The campaigners inside the pod were members of the team that stopped drilling on a controversial rig operated in deep water by Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy. Since the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental campaigners have joined forces with politicians across the world to demand a ban on new deep water drilling.
Greenpeace is threatening legal action against the Cameron Government in an effort to stop the granting of new permits for deep water drilling off the UK. Last month Greenpeace lawyers wrote a so-called ‘letter before action' to ministers - the precursor to seeking a judicial review of the decision to push ahead with new deep water drilling before lessons from the BP disaster have been learned.
The Greenpeace team has informed the Captain of the Stena Carron that fort safety reasons it will not interfere in any way with the ship's second anchor. The team has also informed the police and Chevron that a Greenpeace safety boat will be positioned beneath the pod at all times.
ENDS
Video and stills available
For more, call Greenpeace on 0207 865 8255
Ben Stewart on the Esperanza on +47 5140 7986
Notes:
Investigations into the Gulf of Mexico spill are still underway and the full extent of the tragedy is only now being discovered. Any clean-up operation off Shetland could be severely hampered by rough weather, making it more expensive and difficult than the operation in the US, which as of September 2010 had already cost nearly $10bn (£6.4bn), with continuing costs of $90m per day. Colder waters would also mean that oil would disperse much more slowly, and therefore cause greater damage to wildlife.
Harsh weather conditions west of the Shetlands, in what is described by the UK Government as ‘a particularly challenging location', have so far deterred major exploitation of oil, but recently energy firms have lobbied for and received tax breaks to make production more attractive. The process by which exploration and production licenses are issued by the UK government to the industry is being ‘streamlined'. As a result, Chevron, BP and other oil majors have announced their intention to push further into the region west of Shetland, drilling wells in riskier deeper water and more remote locations than ever before.
