Four Greenpeace Nordic activists on Sunday June 18th briefly delayed a tanker carrying wastewater from the Norwegian oil industry to Denmark.
The Greenpeace members used divers and magnets to attach a small sailboat to the hull of the products tanker Bothnia (IMO 9485356), which was transporting about 9,000 tonnes of contaminated wastewater from the Equinor refinery at Mongstad.
Greenpeace claimed that the long-running export arrangement was in breach of the Basel Convention, the international treaty regulating exports of hazardous waste.
The Norwegian oil industry has exported “produced water” (an oil production byproduct) to Denmark for the past 25 years. Somewhere in the region of 150,000 tonnes of the wastewater is shipped each year. Denmark treats the product and then releases it into Danish waters. Greenpeace said that Norwegian state-owned oil company Equinor was one of the main companies involved in this trade. It claims that the current treatment method was not set up to remove PFOS and PAHs from the water.
The Greenpeace activists held up protest banners with the message “Equinor = toxic”. They painted the slogan “EQUITOX” on the side of the tanker. The crew responded with a firehose and washed it off quickly.
2013-built, Portugal-flagged, 6,382 gt Bothnia is owned to Ciresa Shipping BV care of South End Tanker Management BV of Dordrecht, Netherlands. It is entered with Skuld (Skuld Western Europe And Americas) on behalf of South End Tanker Management BV.
As of June 19th the Bothnia was still moored alongside at a pier at Mongstad.