Beaufort Sea, Alaska, 7pm (UK time) - In an effort to protect the Arctic from the dual threats of climate change and oil spills four Greenpeace activists attempted to stop the controversial pipe-laying operation at BP's Northstar project, the first offshore oil project to be built in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast. One activist managed to climb onto the backhoe laying the pipe and displayed a banner reading "Stop BP's Northstar". The pipe-laying operation is currently stopped. Police have now arrested all four Greenpeace activists.
The action comes just 3 days before BP Amoco's AGM in London where all the company's 900,000 investors will be asked to vote on a shareholder resolution submitted by Greenpeace asking the oil giant to abandon Northstar and redirect funds to its solar division.
The pipeline, if completed, will run six miles offshore and will be buried in potentially unstable permafrost soil under an ocean that is frozen solid or in broken ice conditions for ten months of the year. Greenpeace volunteers have been camping on the frozen sea ice since 14th February to document the construction of Northstar.
Melanie Duchin climate campaigner at the Greenpeace ice camp said,
"BP Amoco knows that the Northstar project will fuel global warming. At the same time as BP Amoco claims to be concerned about the environment - it insists on pushing ahead with this project that has a 1 in 4 chance of despoiling the Arctic and a 100 percent chance of increasing global warming."
BP Amoco's Northstar represents the first use of dangerous unproven technology in the Arctic environment, where severe storms are common and huge blocks of ice regularly gouge through the area in which the pipeline is being built. US Government estimates have predicted up to a 1 in 4 chance of a major oil spill (1000 barrels or more) over the 15-year lifetime of the project. The US Government has also acknowledged that oil spills can only be cleaned up 50 per cent of the time, due to darkness, severe storms and broken ice conditions.
Recent studies by NASA have confirmed that in Polar Regions, global warming has already taken a significant toll as the ice pack melts and marine mammals such as polar bears and walrus lose their habitat and hunting grounds. In the past 40 years the average thickness of the polar pack ice has decreased by 40 percent, and in the past three decades an area the size of the state of Texas has melted away.
Duchin said,
"We are simply asking BP/Amoco to live up to its words. It says it is a green oil company, but if you just scratch the surface of the thin green veneer there is a lot of very dirty, climate destroying oil below. If BP Amoco was truly concerned with either the local Arctic environment or the larger global climate it would cancel the Northstar project and shift the resources it plans to spend on arctic destruction to its solar company to power the renewable energy revolution."
On Thursday 13th April 2000, BP Amoco will hold its Annual General Meeting for its shareholders in London. At this meeting shareholders will have the opportunity to vote on the resolution, put forward by Greenpeace and other responsible investors, which calls on the company to switch away from high-risk, environmentally harmful ventures like Northstar, towards solar and other clean renewable sources of energy. Although BP Amoco has aggressively promoted its solar division as proof it is concerned about global warming, the company actually spends over 100 times more on oil exploration and production.
If Northstar is allowed to begin oil production, it will open the door for several other offshore drilling projects in the Beaufort Sea, off the Alaskan coast. Greenpeace opposes opening up new oil frontiers because climate scientists warn that the world cannot burn even one- quarter of all known fossil fuels without risking dangerous levels of global warming.
