MOSCOW, October 24 (RAPSI) - Russian investigators have replaced piracy charges against Greenpeace activists detained in Murmansk over the Gazprom drilling platform raid in the Pechora Sea with hooliganism charges, Investigative Committee's official spokesperson Vladimir Markin told RIA Novosti.

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.

On October 9, investigators found drugs aboard the ship.

The court has denied bail requested by activists from Russia (Denis Sinyakov, Yekaterina Zaspa, Andrei Allakhverdov, and Roman Dolgov), UK (Phillip Ball, John Byan, Frank Hewetson, Anthony Perrett, Alexandra Harris and Iain Rogers), New Zealand (David Hossman), US (Peter Wilcox), Argentina (Camila Especiale), Australia (Colin Russell), Finland (Sini Saarela), Poland (Tomasz Dziemianczuk) and Argentina (Miguel Hernan Perez Orzi).

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.