News / Chevron seeks interdict
OIL COMPANY Chevron is seeking a court order to remove the Greenpeace protesters from the anchor chain of the Stena Carron, off Shetland.
The environmental pressure group said on Friday afternoon that an interdict granted from the Court of Session in Edinburgh would force the protesters to come down or face huge fines or custodial sentences.
The eco warriors started their protest on Tuesday morning when climbers scaled the Stena Carron’s anchor chain and prevented here from leaving her position.
Greenpeace claimed the 228 metre vessel was about to leave for the west of Shetland to drill for oil in the Lagavulin field, 160 miles northwest of the isles.
Chevron has said the protest was reckless and called on the group to stop interfering with their lawful business.
On Friday, one of the protesters, Leila Deen, said: “Chevron claims it is seeking the court order because it needs to move the ship away from the coast in rough seas for safety reasons – in other words, the company claims its ship can’t hold its position.
“They want to use the same ship to drill for oil in even rougher seas, where a deviation of a few metres in their position risks disaster. In reality our protest was always entirely safe, while deepwater drilling is reckless and dangerous.”
Meanwhile, the pressure group has vowed to continue their protest against deepwater drilling despite a setback at the negotiating table.
On the forth day of the occupation of the anchor chain, environmental ministers meeting in Norway decided not to consider a moratorium on deepwater drilling, as originally proposed by Germany.
Instead, ministers agreed on Friday to wait until the final report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is being presented to US president Obama, in January.
Greenpeace described the decision as a “total victory for the oil industry”.
Speaking from within the ‘survival pod’ suspended from the Stena Carron’s anchor chain around nine metres above the wave, activist Timo Puohiniemi said the protest would continue for as long as necessary.
By Friday afternoon the Finnish activist had already spent 52 hours in the two diameter large fibreglass construction.
He said: “I will stay here as long as necessary. I will come out here and take my pod with me voluntarily if the they say that they would stop drilling for oil in the deep sea. Hopefully I don’t need to spend the rest of my life in here.
“We are running out of oil. People don’t realise that running out of oil means that we are looking for it in more remote areas which makes it even more risky. Finding new oil makes the situation only better for maybe 20 or 30 years, and that is not worth the risk.
“We need to put our efforts and investments into clean and renewable energies, because oil has come to its end already because of its impact on climate change.”
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