Reacting to the news that the cowboy Scottish oil company Cairn Energy has abandoned a well having once again failed to find oil in Greenland, Greenpeace campaigner Ben Ayliffe said:
“Cairn Energy took a multi-million dollar gamble with the fragile Arctic environment and came up with nothing. This should be a lesson to other oil companies like Shell who are eyeing up new ventures among the ice bergs in the far North. What was already an unattractive investment now looks even riskier.”
Ayliffe added:
“Rather than dangerous drilling for oil in the vulnerable Arctic we should be extracting oil from car companies like Volkswagen by forcing them to make more efficient cars.”
Greenpeace activists have run a sustained campaign of direct action against Cairn Energy’s Arctic drilling over the last five months. Tens of activists including the organisation’s international executive director Kumi Naidoo have been arrested in Greenland and Scotland.
The environmental group have accused Cairn Energy of covering up their secret oil spill response plan documents, which the company has consistently refused to make public.
Greenpeace used two of their ships and their speed boats to intercept and disrupt to Cairn’s drilling rig as it travelled from Turkey to Greenland, and then boarded and occupied the rig in the freezing waters of the High North’s Iceberg Alley.
