Northstar: boarding

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

Publication date: August 2000

Summary
Greenpeace has been campaigning for more than 20 years to stop oil exploration and drilling in the Beaufort Sea, and our particular focus over the past four years has been BP's Northstar project. Greenpeace has reviewed thousands of documents and permits on the project, and has provided oral and written comment at every stage of the permitting process. In addition to visiting North Slope villages, attending hearings, conducting speaking tours, maintaining a winter protest camp next to the Northstar construction site, organizing shareholder resolutions and letter writing campaigns to stop the project in the public court of opinion, Greenpeace has also launched a number of challenges in Alaska state and U.S. federal courts to challenge and stop the project.

Eminently SANE: the BP shareholders' group protests against the company's lack of action on climate change

A coalition of environmentalists and investors from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, have combined to challenge BP Amoco's oil expansion plans in the Arctic and the company's lack of action on climate change.

Shareholders voted at BP Amoco's Annual General Meeting in April on the resolution initiated by Greenpeace with partners Trillium Asset Management Corporation and the US Public Interest Research Group. The resolution called on the company to abandon its Northstar project, the first offshore oil production facility in the Arctic Ocean, and to end attempts to open the US Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. It also called for the funds from Northstar's cancellation to be redirected to BP Amoco's solar subsidiary company, BP Solarex.

"The battle to save the Arctic from oil exploration and climate change is heading to the boadroom. This resolution is intended to send a strong signal to the BP Board that they must make a fundamental shift in their investment strategy if they are to successfully manage the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy," said Greenpeace spokesperson Matthew Spencer. Currently BP's investment in renewable energy equals about three days of it annual oil and gas spending.

The resolution is supported by investment companies and environment groups including: the WWF, the Wilderness Society (US), the Gwich'in Steering Committee, Caribou Commons, the Alaska Wilderness League and the Sierra Club. A number of the groups will be demonstrating outside the BP Amoco meeting.

"The appearance of this resolution on the BP Amoco AGM agenda represents a major victory for shareholders concerned about BP Amoco's environmental performance," said Simon Billenness of the Boston-based Trillium Asset Management Corporation, an ethical investment fund. "US-styled shareholder activism has arrived in Europe."

The influential Pension and Investment Research Consultants (PIRC) has recommended in a report to its clients, which include some of the largest funds in the UK, to support the Greenpeace resolution. The Derbyshire County Council Pension Fund and South Yorkshire Pension Fund have announced they will support the resolution while Birmingham City Council Fund has said it will show its disapproval of BP by abstaining from a vote on the motion.

"BP Amoco is currently behind a major push in the US to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and we urge BP Amoco shareholders to protect the Arctic by voting for this resoluton," said Athan Manuel of the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

The Wilderness Society director of Refuges and wildlife, Jim Waltman said:"The Wilderness Society is outraged that a British-owned company is so out of touch with American opinion on this issue. Numerous surveys show Americans want permanent protection for Alaska's Arctic Refuge. How would the British public feel if a US company was lobbying for the right to strip coal mine the UK Lake district?"

The Refuge is one of the last pristine areas left in the United States. Caribou, muskoxen, wolves, polar, brown and black bears, and hundreds of migratory birds rely on the wilderness habitat the refuge provides. the Gwich'in, which means "people of the caribou" haved lived in and around the refuge for thousands of years. Their subsistence culture depends on the caribou herd.

"We're travelled half around the globe to deliver our message direct to the BP Amoco shareholders because the company has never asked the Gwich'in people, who have lived on this land for more than 20,000 years, whether we want oil development. Perhaps because we would say no." said Norma Kassi of the International Gwich'in steering committee.

The US Department of the Interior has concluded that oil development in the coastal plain of the Arctic, which includes the ANWR would have major adverse impacts on the vast herd of caribou that migrate there each spring to give birth. The coastal plain is also the most important denning area for the entire South Beaufort Sea polar bear population and serves as a crucial habitat for musk oxen and at least 180 bird species. The Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service also predicts that 10 oil spills, each in excess of 1000 barrels, will occur in the Arctic Ocean if offshore development such as Northstar proceeds.

The Arctic under threar from oil exploration - painting by Kurt Jackson

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.

Sovereign Explorer: inflatable

Four Greenpeace volunteers have occupied a second oil exploration rig in Cromarty Firth, Scotland, as part of a campaign to stop dangerous climate change and protect marine life in the north east Atlantic. The occupation comes just days after two Greenpeace climbers occupied the Jack Bates exploration rig in the same area. Both rigs are due to begin drilling operations in the deep waters west of the Hebrides (the so called "Atlantic Frontier") which is Europe's most important habitat for whales and coral reefs. The drilling area was the subject of a successful legal challenge by Greenpeace in the English High Court in November 1999.

All of the main environment and conservation groups in the UK (including RSPB and WWF) have written to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott asking him to prevent further drilling in the Atlantic Frontier (letter attached at [2]). Greenpeace have also written to Scottish Office Minister Brian Wilson asking for a meeting to discuss the future of renewable energy schemes in Scotland but have received no reply.

Rob Gueterbock, Greenpeace Climate & Energy campaigner, said:
"All of Britain's conservation groups oppose this drilling yet John Prescott refuses to even comment. Brian Wilson claims that Greenpeace is hiding behind the renewable energy argument and yet avoids meeting us to discuss these issues. Mr Wilson lacks even the most basic facts - he doesn't know that Denmark has already created 15,000 jobs in the wind industry. Scottish Enterprise has recently said that Scotland is missing out on a major opportunity to develop a thriving renewable energy industry."

Rob Gueterbock continued:
"The UK government must face up to this issue: will it invest in a massive expansion of the renewable energy industry which will protect the environment and create thousands of jobs or go ahead with oil exploration condemning us all to more dangerous climate change and wrecking the marine environment."

The occupied rig is the Sovereign Explorer currently chartered by Marathon Oil. The Greenpeace volunteers intend to maintain the occupation until such time as the UK Government suspends the drilling on the Atlantic Frontier.

Rob Gueterbock added:
"In the last 10 years, the number of oil jobs in North East Scotland has fallen by around 14,000. While the UK Government continues to support this declining industry it is missing out on massive opportunities to create a wind and wave industry. If the UK adopted a target of generating 10% of electricity from offshore wind, it would create 36,000 jobs."

The drilling scheduled for the Atlantic Frontier is unnecessary since none of the potential oil discoveries could safely be used as fuel if the climate is to be protected. The Government has estimated that industrial countries like the UK may have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90% if we are to prevent catastrophic rates of climate change and that "achieving this will almost certainly require a major shift away from fossil fuels." The police have detained a large but unknown number of Greenpeace volunteers in the region.

Notes to Editors:
[1] In November 1999 the UK Government was defeated by Greenpeace in a landmark legal ruling to protect coral reefs and whales and dolphins. The English High Court ruling means that all future offshore oil licensing is now illegal until the Government properly applies the EU Habitats Directive. However, the Government is allowing drilling to go ahead even though it has not yet implemented the High Court ruling which aims to protect vulnerable species and habitats.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Maurice Kay told the court that Greenpeace's case that whales and dolphins can be harmed by oil industry activity was "substantially uncontradicted" by UK Government and oil industry evidence, and that oil exploration was "at least likely" to have an "adverse effect" on deep water coral reefs.

Greenpeace's case centred on the UK Government's decision to only apply the EU Habitat's Directive up to 12 miles from the coast rather than the 200 mile limit where it licenses oil drilling. The judge said that the government had "clearly" not applied the Habitats Directive offshore.

[2] Text of letter to John Prescott from UK environment and conservation groups 27 March 2000:
Dear Deputy Prime Minister,
As Secretary of State for the Environment you have been an effective champion of environmental issues and have made real advances in climate protection and marine pollution. Some of this good work is about to be undone by the Department of Trade and Industry. With their consent, three new oil wells - the first wave of development - are about to be drilled in the pristine Atlantic Ocean west of Scotland. These wells should not be drilled. You are one of the few people who can prevent this haven for whales, dolphins, seabirds and coral reefs being needlessly scarred by oil exploration.
As a result of a High Court ruling last November, all UK oil licensing is illegal until appropriate protection is provided under European Habitats Directive. But in the short space of time since the ruling, the necessary steps to apply the Directive have not yet been completed by your department. The DTI is ignoring this and putting coral reefs in particular under a very real threat.
Far from being in the national interest, this destructive drilling is totally unnecessary as none of the oil found can safely be used as fuel. Your recent climate strategy made clear that a major shift away from fossil fuels is required to cut CO2 emissions by as much as 90%. This means that instead of exploring for new oil, reliance on fossil fuels must be phased out in an orderly way. Existing reserves of fossil fuels would, if burnt, produce at least twice as much carbon dioxide as can be tolerated if we are to prevent dangerous levels of climate change.
Nor is there a good economic case for allowing these wells. Employment in oil is in decline. For the long-term protection of jobs and the environment, Government money must switch from oil to clean renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power.
Please continue to support the protection of our marine environment and our climate by stopping this drilling.

Environmental Investigation Agency
Friends of the Earth England and Wales
Friends of the Earth Scotland
Greenpeace
Marine Conservation Society
RSPB
Wildlife trusts
Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
WWF

Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace Press Office - 020 7865 8256

A Greenpeace protester hangs a banner from an oil rig in Cromarty Firth, Scotland

Police are still searching for two Greenpeace volunteers who vanished after abandoning their occupation of an oil rig.

The protesters had tied themselves to Enterprise Oil's Jack Bates platform in the Cromarty Firth on Sunday and spent the night there before coming down at 1600 BST on Monday. Grampian Police then lost sight of them.

The protesters left the rig after being ordered to come down by a judge in Edinburgh who granted Enterprise Oil an interdict.

The semi-submersible rig, which has been under charter to Enterprise Oil and had undergone a refit, was preparing to leave its anchorage to begin drilling off the Outer Hebrides when a group of protesters climbed on board.

Two protesters stayed on the rig through the night while another five people, allegedly involved in the action, were charged with breach of the peace.

Greenpeace spokesman and climate and energy campaigner Rob Gueterbock said: "We decided the climbers should come down because our fight is not with the courts. But it is a sad day for the sensitive environment of the Atlantic Frontier and a sad day for our environment. All the main environmental bodies in Scotland, England and Wales have backed us in opposing the drilling for oil west of Shetland."