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Beaufort Sea, Alaska, 3pm local time - Five Greenpeace activists were today arrested by Alaska State Troopers while occupying a barge working for BP in the Arctic Ocean. The 130-metre barge carrying a control centre and accommodation module was en-route to BP's controversial Northstar oil installation. The five Greenpeace activists, three from the UK and two from the US, had occupied the barge for 39 hours.

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.

Greenpeace today held a press conference to call on the British Government and its state-owned nuclear reprocessing company, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) to immediately rescind the freeze on its bank account, and to end plans to expand plutonium fuel (MOX) production at BNFL's Sellafield plant in Cumbria, north England.