MOSCOW, October 18 (RAPSI) - The Murmansk region court dismissed an appeal filed by a UK Greenpeace activist Alexandra Harris against her detention over the Gazprom drilling platform raid in the Pechora Sea, Greenpeace said Friday in Twitter.

Earlier, the court denied bail requested by activists from Russia (Denis Sinyakov, Yekaterina Zaspa, Andrei Allakhverdov, and Roman Dolgov), UK (Phillip Ball, John Byan, Frank Hewetson and Anthony Perrett), New Zealand (David Hossman), US (Peter Wilcox), Argentina (Camila Especiale) and Australia (Colin Russell).

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.