Greenpeace NZ Try to Impede Deep-water Drill Ship Operation

Noble Corporation, contracted to Texan petroleum company, is preparing to drill one of New Zealand's deepest ever exploratory wells in the Taranaki Basin with its drill-ship 'Noble Bob Douglas'.  Protesters have admitted they cannot stop drilling off the coast of New Zealand, but intend to make it difficult for them, reports TVNZ News.

The Greenpeace NZ blog informs: "... the calm of our peaceful flotilla was broken. In 24 hours we’ve gone from a collection of yachts enjoying the company of whales, sharks, dolphins along with a lot of other spectacular Tasman wildlife, to living in the shadow of Anadarko’s monstrous drill ship the Noble Bob Douglas. As the sun rose this morning over this beautiful section of the Pacific, the scene was dominated by the ugly sight of ‘Bob’. Just to give the size of this behemoth some context, Ros on the Baltazar described it’s approach yesterday like this: "Even while it was several miles away we could hear the roaring of Bob's engine room fans & see black smoke pluming" - you can imagine what it’s like floating here less than 500m from it!"

According to the latest news from TVNZ , five of the [Greenpeace] boats have already retreated from the drill zone, which is situated 204 kilometres off the coast of Raglan, leaving the 3.5-metre Vega to continue the stalemate with the 229-metre drill ship alone.

Sources: Greenpeace/TVNZ.

In related Greenpeace news
Nine Greenpeace activists have been granted bail in St Petersburg, Russia. Twelve of the so-called Arctic 30 have now been told they will soon be released. They were told they will be released from jail if they can provide financial surety of 2 million rubles (45k Euros).