14 DAY TRIAL // 28 Greenpeace activists, a journalist and a videographer are now in police custody in Russia. They have all been charged with piracy, and risk being sentenced to 15 years in prison.
As reported, these people were arrested after two of them boarded an oil rig owned and operated by Russian oil company Gazprom.
In a recent interview with the BBC, the company formulated several accusations against the Greenpeace activists, all of which boil down to the fact that their actions endangered the stability of the oil rig and the safety of the workers aboard it.
As was to be expected, Greenpeace was quick to respond to Gazprom's claims, and refuted them all. What's more, it labeled them as “absurd.”
In a blogpost published just yesterday, Greenpeace explains that the oil company's claim that “By coming so close Greenpeace could have damaged the base of the platform” is pretty much “ludicrous.”
“The Prirazlomnaya is over 100 square meters, designed to withstand being hit by massive chunks of ice during the Arctic winter and has over 200,000 tonnes of rubble and concrete holding it in place,” the organization explains.
Furthermore, “The whole platform has a gravitational weight of over half a million tonnes, while Gazprom said itself that ‘the base platform can withstand a direct torpedo strike.’ The idea that a small rubber inflatable could cause significant damage to it is plainly absurd.”
The next claim the organization addresses is the one that, “When they threw up their equipment they could easily have hit somebody.”
Greenpeace argues that its activists could not have possibly injured anyone, simply because the only thing that they used to scale the oil rig was rope.
What's more, the rope was thrown over a fixed point that sat at a considerable distance from the rig's main deck, and no workers were anywhere nearby.
“This point is approximately 10 meters below the main deck of the Prirazlomnaya, where crew might possibly be standing at the railing. Further, the platform has an overhanging structure above this point, meaning it was impossible that the rope ball could have reached any workers.”
“The only rig workers in sight were busy spraying ice cold water cannons at our activists from the deck of the rig itself,” Greenpeace details in the blogpost.
Greenpeace also refuted the claim that, when using ropes to climb aboard the oil rig, the protesters might have accidentally ruptured one of the pressurized pipes, thus causing a diesel spill.
“We attached a climbing rope to the side of the platform, well below the deck level and any pipes that might be housed there. There was never any chance that it might rupture a pipe or cause a spill. It’s ridiculous for Gazprom to claim that Greenpeace International is endangering the Arctic environment or its workers,” the organization argues.
Lastly, Greenpeace wishes to stress that, for the time being, Gazprom is yet to prove that it is able to handle any accidental spill that might occur while drilling for oil in the Arctic.
The organization details that, until now, the company has only produced a “summary document” that does not contain any useful information concerning how workers would act in the event of a spill.
As Greenpeace puts it, “The company has absolutely no proven method to clean up oil spilled in ice, as the US Geological Survey itself concluded. Its response plan relies on booms and skimmers that simply do not work in even limited ice conditions, of which the USGS warned faced ‘severe limitations’ due to extreme conditions in the Arctic.”
Presently, Greenpeace and its supporters are working hard to get the 30 people held in police custody in Russia released. Stay tuned for more information.