Gazprom tanker hunted by Greenpeace

Greenpeace International is sending a ship to meet with a Russian tanker which is bringing the first oil shipment from an offshore platform in the Arctic circle.

‘The tanker is currently heading south into the North Sea as it makes for Rotterdam, so we expect the two ships to meet at some stage in the coming days,’ stated Ben Ayliffe, Greenpeace spokesman.

The ‘Rainbow Warrior III’ Greenpeace ship plans to confront the ‘Mikhail Ulyanov’ Gazprom tanker and protest against oil exploitation in the Arctic Circle, a territory vulnerable to climate change caused by fossil fuels that would suffer immensely from an oil spill.

Sunday, Greenpeace spokesman added another reason to the protest, saying that purchasing Russian oil: ‘increases our dependence on Russian energy firms and only serves to strengthen President Putin's hand in the geopolitical game he's playing.’

Greenpeace is not at its first action of this kind against Russian state-owned oil company Gazprom, after 28 activists and 2 journalists were arrested in September for piracy. They protested near Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya offshore Arctic platform. Although they were released, their ship , the ‘Arctic Sunrise’, remains in Russian custody to this day.