ST.PETERSBURG, November 19 (RAPSI) - Six Greenpeace activists detained in Russia over an Arctic drilling protest in September have been released on bail, Greenpeace wrote on its Twitter account on Tuesday.

A court in St. Petersburg ordered to release Tomasz Dziemianczuk (Poland), Miguel Hernan Perez Orzi and Camila Speziale (Argentina), David John Haussmann (New Zealand) Ana Paula Alminhana Maciel (Brazil) and Greenpeace's press office chief Andrei Allakhverdov.

On Monday, a ship medic Yekaterina Zaspa and photographer Denis Sinyakov were freed on bail of 2 million rubles ($61,414). Furthermore, the detention of the Australian Greenpeace activist Colin Russell was extended for 3 months.

The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.

The platform, owned by Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is the first ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the world set to produce offshore Arctic oil.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable.

On October 21, the Netherlands filed a request with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to inflict interim measures which must be taken before the trial on the merits to protect the interests of the party in the dispute.