Greenpeace says it is sending a protest ship to meet a Russian tanker carrying the first oil drilled offshore in the environmentally fragile Arctic.
The ship, Rainbow Warrior, is to be captained by Peter Willcox, who was among campaigners detained by Russian authorities last year after staging a high-profile protest against Arctic drilling.
The vessel is due to set sail from Rotterdam on Monday afternoon and plans to escort to harbour the Russian tanker Mikhail Ulyanov, which is delivering oil purchased by French energy giant Total.
The oil was drilled at the Prirazlomnaya platform, an offshore rig owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom and the site of Greenpeace's protest last September.
The protest, which saw two campaigners attempt to scale the rig, prompted Russian authorities to seize Greenpeace's Dutch-flagged Arctic Sunrise boat and detain the 30 activists and journalists on board.
Greenpeace argues that the Gazprom rig is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. It says the rig risks ruining the pristine Arctic ecology of the southern Barents Sea where the deposit is located.
The activists had faced lengthy prison terms before Moscow announced amnesties.
Greenpeace has accused France's Total of hypocrisy for buying the Arctic oil, after its CEO Christophe de Margerie said in 2012 that his company would not drill in the fragile region.
A Total spokesman in Paris confirmed the controversial purchase but insisted the company would not itself be drilling in the Arctic.
