MOSCOW, October 15 (RAPSI) – Murmansk region court on Tuesday denied bail and left in detention Greenpeace activist Frank Hewetson, accused of piracy after the recent environmentalist raid on a Gazprom drilling platform.

The activist’s appeal against his arrest was rejected, and he will remain in detention until November 24.

Earlier, the court also rejected appeals filed by activists from Russia (Denis Sinyakov, Yekaterina Zaspa, Andrei Allakhverdov and Roman Dolgov,  UK (Phillip Ball and John Byan), New Zealand (David Hossman), US (Peter Wilcox) and Argentina (Camila Especiale).

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. Greenpeace claimed that the ship was held under armed guard.

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 without state subsidies.