On Wednesday morning the Greenpeace activists and a couple of “polar bears” blocked the entrance to the office of Gazprom in Moscow, creating an imitation of Arctic nature reserve opposite the building.
A couple of dozens activists from Russia, Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary created a new Arctic nature reserve near the office of Gazprom in Moscow – a realistic one with snow, polar bears and even tourists: the activists pitched theirs tents on the snow and chained them and themselves to the fence. The territory of the “nature reserve” was surrounded by the giant 10 meter high banners in English and Russian: “Gazprom Kills Arctic”.
In Berlin the activists installed opposite the office of Gazprom the three meter high dummy of an oil derrick – black liquid is pouring down from it on the block of ice below, which is meant to remind of the threat of oil spills and their dreadful consequences for the nature of the Arctic.
“The probability of an accident in these severe lands is very high. Considering the fact that no efficient methods of oil spill clean up in the icy conditions have been developed in the world so far, the ambition of the oil giants such as Shell or Gazprom to pump the last drops of the “black gold” from the Arctic as soon as possible is threatening with the irrecoverable consequences to the whole region, which is already suffering from the climatic change. The only way to stop the catastrophe is to ban any drilling here and to create a global nature reserve around the North Pole, thus turning it into the territory of peace and science”, — the head of the energy department at Greenpeace Russia Vladimir Chuprov is convinced.
Las week Gazprom officially admitted that the giant Stockman project on gas production in the Barents Sea was frozen for n undefined period of time: the costs proved to be too high. Greenpeace appeals to the company to stop other projects in the Arctic seas as well, in particular — the development of the oil deposit “Prirazlomnoye” in the Barents Sea, and to invest the money into the development of energy efficiency and the renewable energy sources. Because the future belongs to these industries.
“The situation with the Stockman oil field in a serious sign for the investors and other oil companies: the arctic hydrocarbon projects are too risky, too costly and therefore do not make any economic sense. Russia needs an entirely different way – an alternative energy scenario, energy efficiency technologies and renewable energy sources. This will allow us to reduce the dependence of the federal budget on oil and gas revenues and make a transition to a new, high-tech model of economic growth”, — Roman Dolgov, the coordinator of the Arctic project of Greenpeace in Russia, says.
This is not the first protest initiated by the Greenpeace activists against the plans of industrial development of the Arctic shelf. In June 2011 the head of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidu climbed the oil derrick of the British Cairn Energy in Greenland demanding to publicize the accident management plan and to stop all works. In summer of 2012 the series of protests against the plans of Shell to start drilling at the shores of Alaska rolled over globally. And in August 2012 the activists of Greenpeace International climbed the first in the world off-shore ice resistant platform Prirazlomnaya in the Barents Sea, as a form of protest against the plans of Gazprom Neft shelf to carry out drillings in this fragile region.
Метки: environmental protests, Gazprom, Greenpeace, oil companies, oil production, Газпром нефть шельф
