Banner at Champions League Match in Naples

Greenpeace climbers unfolded a banner from the top of a toll tower just outside the entrance of the football Stadium San Paolo in Naples during a Champions League match, reading “Gazprom quit the Arctic”. Gazprom, Russian oil giant and one of the sponsors of the event, is racing to become the world’s first oil company to commercially exploit oil reserves in the ice-covered waters of the Arctic. The site where Gazprom is about to start oil extraction is ice-covered for two thirds of the year, with temperatures plunging to as low as minus 50C, violent storms and long periods of darkness during the winter months. Greenpeace is campaigning for a ban on offshore drilling in the Arctic, and for the uninhabited area around the North Pole to be declared a global sanctuary.