ice camp

Greenpeace Arctic ice camp

Two Greenpeace volunteers and a British photographer were arrested last night attempting to expose oil company BP Amoco's destruction of the Arctic. The three were documenting BP Amoco's Arctic oil project when they were arrested by Alaska State troopers. The arrests occurred just before the arrival of a party of journalists invited by BP to visit the construction site of Northstar - the first offshore oilrig in the Alaskan Arctic Ocean.

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Greenpeace volunteers have set up an ice camp on the frozen Arctic Ocean to investigate and monitor the construction of BP Amoco's 'Northstar', the first offshore oil rig to be built in the Alaskan Arctic. Equipped with polar survival gear and communications equipment, the eight volunteers, braving temperatures of minus 42 C, set up camp just one mile from the controversial Northstar site. The camp was completed early this morning (Monday). 

Due to the extreme Arctic winter, the ice camp, which consists of two survival huts powered by five wind turbines, took over two weeks to deploy. The volunteers used snow machines to travel to a temporary site seven miles from the camp, where they spent 15 days living in tents, preparing a runway for a supply plane. A parachutist helped guide the plane in to land. The supplies were then shuttled out on snowmobiles to the final camp, one mile from BP's Northstar site.

Speaking from the camp, Dan Ritzman, Greenpeace climate campaigner said,
"We're here to highlight the threat BP poses to the future of the Arctic. Our camp is on the frontline of global warming - the Arctic is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet. The ice is melting, polar bears are starving yet BP is digging for new oil which will only make the problem worse. BP's customers would be shocked to see what the company is trying do out here."

BP Amoco's Northstar will speed up the effects of climate change, which is having a devastating effect on the Western Arctic. Polar bears are already starving as the Arctic ice pack on which they hunt melts away. Overall ice thickness has already declined by 40% and an area of ice bigger than Wales disappears every year.