August 2000. Six Greenpeace volunteers (including four Britons) today occupied a British Petroleum transport barge off the Alaskan coast as it was being towed to the construction site of the Northstar project - the first offshore oil development in the Arctic Ocean. The volunteers (from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise) boarded the massive sea barge at 9.00am GMT (midnight in Alaska). The barge carries the main operating and accomodation modules for Northstar.
The team immediately set up a campaign and communications centre inside the Northstar control room which is being transported on the barge. The communications centre is powered by solar and wind energy and will be used as a base for the Greenpeace team.
If oil drilling from BP's Northstar project is allowed to go ahead it will generate further dangerous climate change which is already causing severe meltdown in the Arctic. Northstar will pave the way for further offshore oil expansion in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean and the coastal plane of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Stephanie Tunmore, one of the British volunteers occupying the barge, said:
"The chips are down for the Arctic and for BP. The Arctic is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet and polar bears and walrus are showing signs of starvation as the sea ice melts away. If BP don't want to be implicated in the meltdown they should turn this barge around. The costs of continuing with Northstar far outweigh the costs of stopping it now."
The Greenpeace action comes only days after BP announced a massive global rebranding exercise - positioning the oil company as an environmentally responsible multinational that was "Beyond petroleum". In fact BP is planning to expand its oil and gas investments by 40%. The annual cost of BP's rebranding exercise - $100 million annually is more than the company spent on renewable energy last year. Today's occupation of the BP barge follows on from a historic vote by BP shareholders at the company's AGM in April.13% of BP investors voted in favour of a Greenpeace resolution to cancel Northstar and for the freed-up capital to be switched to BP's solar division. This was the highest vote for an environmental resolution at a multinational's AGM anywhere in the world.
Stephanie Tunmore continued:
"BP has already had a clear message from many of its shareholders that it should end its destructive activities in the Arctic and begin a real move away from damaging fossil fuels to clean, sustainable forms of energy. All the time and money that has been spent by BP recently on their new green image will count for nothing if it continues to be seen as a world-famous climate destroyer."
The Arctic is on the front-line of global warming. The western Arctic is already warming three to five times faster than the global average. The Arctic ice pack has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years - ice thickness has declined by more than 40% percent and an area the size of Texas has disappeared in the last 20 years. Marine mammals are under threat as the ice pack on which they hunt and breed melts away.
Notes to Editors:
[1] The occupied barge is one of several being towed by tugs around the coast of Alaska to the Northstar development. The tugs contain large infrastructure (like accomodation blocks, generators and the control room) to expand the Northstar development and start the full commercialisation of oil extraction. The control room occupied by the volunteers is intended to be used as the overall control centre for the Northstar operation.
[2] The volunteers on the barge are: Stan Vincent (UK) Kevin Benn (UK) Stephanie Tunmore(UK) Mateo Williford (US) Dan Broadley (UK) Kimberly Madeiro (US)
[3] Greenpeace has been campaigning for 20 years to stop oil development in the Beaufort Sea
