drill star

At 6.30 am today, police boarded the ship MV Greenpeace, in Blyth Harbour, near Newcastle, and arrested six people including the ship's captain in connection with Greenpeace's campaign to stop oil exploration. Police have still not made it clear what the charge is against the Greenpeace volunteers.

The ship had been due to sail to Stockholm at 8am today as part of an international campaign to highlight chemical pollution in the Baltic Sea.

Greenpeace Executive Director Stephen Tindale said:

Greenpeace today (Monday 2nd April) revealed that Texas-based oil giant JET has been funding US President George Bush's sabotaging of international action on global warming. The revelation comes as seven Greenpeace volunteers approached the 24 hour mark in their occupation of JET's oil exploration rig the Drillstar. The activists have been successfully preventing the rig from leaving Scotland's Cromarty Firth to drill in the North Sea since Sunday morning. JET has now taken the Greenpeace volunteers to court to force them to end their peaceful occupation.

Bush has recently shocked Europe by going back on his promise to cut pollution from US power stations and is refusing to co-operate with the world's efforts to combat global warming saying it is not in the US's "economic interests".

Twenty-one Greenpeace volunteers today (Sunday, 1st April, 10.30am) took part in a dramatic mass occupation to stop a JET oil exploration rig as it was leaving Scotland's Cromarty Firth. The oil from US multinational JET is fuelling dangerous global warming which is threatening the lives of millions and flooding homes.

Nine Greenpeace volunteers were barricaded up in the oil-rigs 180ft drill stack, before abseiling down the JET rig to safety. The climbers were in good spirits and determined to stop JET wrecking the climate with more oil.

Laura Yates, Greenpeace volunteer, said
"It was windy and starting to get cold, but we were feeling really pleased that we managed to stop the Jet oilrig from going out to sea to drill for more oil that we can't burn".