(GP 31-08-10)  Four Greenpeace activists have taken up position on the drilling rig that is being operated by a British company Cairn Energy, in Greenland. The four volunteers are suspended 15 meters above the frigid Arctic waters of Baffin Bay, which has made stop the drilling work.

The climbers have enough supplies to occupy the hanging tents for several days. If they are able to halt the drilling for just a short time, Cairn Energy will struggle to meet a tight deadline to complete its exploration before winter ice conditions force it to abandon the search for oil off Greenland until next year. This way, there would be enough time to try to get a global ban on such operations in deep waters.

Sim McKenna from the United States, one of the campaigners hanging fifteen metres above the bitterly cold Arctic ocean, said: “We’ve got to keep the energy companies out of the Arctic and kick our addiction to oil, that’s why we’re going to stop this rig from drilling for as long as we can. The BP Gulf oil disaster showed us it’s time to go beyond oil. The drilling rig we’re hanging off could spark an Arctic oil rush, one that would pose a huge threat to the climate and put this fragile environment at risk.”

A Danish Thetis-class 120m warship, commandos in speed boats and a flotilla of police boats have been shadowing the Greenpeace ship Esperanza for the last nine days. The rig has been forced to stop drilling because any breach of the 500m security zone around it results in a routine shutdown. It is currently drilling in volcanic rock, having failed to strike oil, and is due to move soon to a new drill site 100km away. The campaigners hope today’s occupation will delay the move or even cause it to be cancelled.

THE DELAY COULD CANCEL THE DRILLING

It is possible that the company is thinking of moving the drilling work about 60 miles, since they have found no oil here, so Greenpeace action could get that the removal is delays or even cancelled.

Last week Cairn announced it had struck gas at a site a few miles from the occupied rig, but not oil. The fragile environment west of Disko Island is known as Iceberg Alley due to the plentiful icebergs and tough conditions. This has deterred oil companies from attempting exploration there in recent years.

But the world’s oil giants are watching the Cairn project with great interest. If the Edinburgh-based company strikes oil, analysts expect a new Arctic oil rush, with Exxon, Chevron and other energy giants already buying up licenses to drill in the area and making preparations to move in.

Jon Burgwald, a Greenpeace campaigner onboard the Esperanza, which is about a kilometre from the occupied platform, said: “Instead of letting the oil companies drill for the last drops of oil in pristine places like the Arctic, our governments should be pushing the development of the clean energy technologies we need to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on dirty fuels.”

The U.S. government calculates that the chance of a major spill occurring over the lifetime of a single block of leases in its own Arctic waters is greater than 20% - while those odds increase with every extra license granted. If the Cairn operation strikes oil the number of wells sunk off Greenland would increase dramatically.

CAIRN REFUSES TO PUBLISH AN EMERGENCY PLAN

The well being drilled by Cairn is at a depth of 300-500 metres, while the moratorium introduced by President Barack Obama after the Deepwater Horizon disaster applies to wells deeper than 152 metres. Cairn has refused to publish a comprehensive plan for how it would deal with a spill from the platform, and has just 14 vessels capable of reacting to a spill (BP’s response in the Gulf of Mexico required more than 3000 vessels).

Drilling west of Greenland is limited to a ‘summer window’ between July and early October. After this date, sea-ice becomes too thick to allow vessels to operate and relief wells cannot be drilled effectively. The area which contains the occupied rig is known locally as ‘iceberg alley’. Cairn has to tow icebergs out of the rig’s path or use water cannons to divert them.

If the icebergs are too large the company has pledged to move the rig itself to avoid a collision. Last month a 260km2 ice island broke off the Petermann glacier north of Disko island and will eventually make its way south through Nares Strait into Baffin Bay and the Labrador Current before reaching the area where drilling is taking place.

HOME TO MOST OF THE WORLD’S NARWHALS

Baffin Bay is home to 80 to 90% of the world’s Narwhals. The region is also home to blue whales, polar bears, seals, sharks, cormorants, kittiwakes and numerous other migratory birds.

Cairn’s Greenland project is representative of a new approach to modern oil exploration, where self-styled ‘wildcat’ companies take on huge financial and technical risks in the hope of hitting a previously undiscovered reservoir of oil. The company’s complete lack of in-house infrastructure and failure to provide a comprehensive spill response plan raises serious questions about Cairn’s ability to deal with an accident in one of the most hostile environments on earth.

Cairn is run by Sir Bill Gammell, a childhood friend of both Tony Blair and George W Bush. According to Gammell, the company seeks ‘big acreage’ to give it a wide area for exploration, in contrast to the smaller parcels that are routinely found in the North Sea for example.

The dangers of this approach become clear in the event of a spill, where the operation’s remote location means there is little infrastructure already in place to begin any clean up operation.