Cairn wins injunction against Greenpeace over Arctic oil drilling protest
Date added: 10 June, 2011
battle of our age”. To lure away one of two Danish warships patrolling the area,
the Esperanza’s sister ship – Arctic Sunrise – would be used as a decoy, sailing
elsewhere in the middle of the night.
biggest-ever seaborne non-violent direct action: the storming of the Leiv Eiriksson,
a 53,000-tonne rig currently used by Cairn Energy, the FTSE 100 oil and gas explorer, to drill for oil in the sub-Arctic region’s
frigid seas.
activist aboard the ship and a Greenpeace communications officer.
is more muted but no less defiant.
it will incur a penalty of €50,000 ($71,700), up to a maximum of €1m.
in the Arctic since the company drilled its first wells there last summer. This
year Cairn is spending $600m to explore prospects with an estimated 3.2bn barrels
of oil equivalent.
halving the ships’ respective crews – for breaching the company’s operations.
and wild facial hair – do make up a proportion of the Greenpeace crew. But they
are outnumbered by a Benetton-advert range of activists and volunteers from 14
countries and across the professional spectrum: doctors, mountain guides, engineers,
a PhD student in anthropology, two cooks, a former private security guard and
a professional bass guitarist.
Cairn had argued for – the company estimates it stands to lose €4m for every day
it is prevented from drilling – there is doubt as to whether the direct action
part of Greenpeace’s campaign can continue.
last Saturday – two colleagues had been arrested for hanging off the underside
of the rig in a “survival pod” for four days.
strategy – for now – will focus on what it says is Cairn’s refusal to release
its full oil spill response plan, a contention that was noted by the Dutch court.
to effectively clean up – a scenario worsened by the fact Cairn can only operate
during the region’s short summer window when ice temporarily yields to ocean.
rigorous international norms. It says it cannot release details because of a “stipulation
of the Greenlandic authorities, not because of any decision by Cairn”. The company
adds: “Our greatest concern in conducting our lawful operations is ensuring they
are done safely.”
press denouncing it as a violation of national sovereignty.
have reserves of 20bn barrels of oil. Many Greenlanders hope future oil revenue
could allow its fishing and tourism-dependent economy to achieve full independence
from Denmark.
Circle is not new, and that several million barrels of oil are already produced
each day in the area.
are doing so at the invitation of the Greenland government and people,” the company
says.
united by a more general opposition to frontier oil: if the Arctic – surely the
ultimate frontier – is open for business then nowhere is sacred.
from New Zealand blogging from a cabin below the Arctic Sunrise’s mess.
the ice cap – that should be a catalyst to a non-fossil fuel future and not an
invitation to extract more oil.”
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if the company’s operations are disrupted, up to a maximum of €1m (£887,000).
of “non-violent direct action” against Cairn, which has seen 20 protesters arrested
in just over a week.
Strait,
Leiv Eiriksson rig.
Sunrise and the Esperanza – which have been used to harass Cairn’s operations
and drum up publicity.
Stewart, a Greenpeace communications officer aboard the Esperanza told the Financial
Times.
18 protesters scaled the legs of the 53,000-tonne Leiv Eiriksson and occupied
its platform in an early morning raid.
pod” strapped to the underside of the rig for four days. Though the injunction
is a victory for Cairn, the fine stipulated by the judge is far less than the
€2m for every day of halted drilling sought by the company when it applied for
the injunction last week.
would continue. “It will happen on the high seas, in the courtroom, in the high
street and the ballot box. This is far from over,” said Mr Stewart.
has not been released – for use in the event of a spill such as
reserves of 20bn barrels of oil, according to Wood Mackenzie, the consultancy.
3.2bn barrels of oil equivalent.
Posted: Friday, June 10th, 2011. Filed in Publicity & Politics.