Fines for Greenpeace protesters, but no oil for Cairn

Twenty Greenpeace protesters have been found guilty of trespassing and fined by a Greenland court, after they scaled one of the world’s biggest oil rigs off Greenland last May.

Of these, 18 were also found guilty of breaking the security zone around the rig.

Two received fines of about $280, with the others face fines of $750 each — a much smaller amount than Cairn Energy originally asked for in court.

Last May, Greenpeace protesters from nine countries boarded the 53,000-tonne Leiv Eiriksson rig in the waters west of Greenland.

They demanded that the Scottish company Cairn Energy publish its plan for dealing with an oil spill in the Arctic.

More than 100,000 people eventually signed a petition calling for the document be released, a Sept. 28 Greenpeace news release said.

The Greenland Government finally published the plan in August.

“We take full responsibility for our peaceful actions to protect the Arctic,” Greenpeace Campaigner Ben Ayliffe said. “Cairn Energy admits that a spill in this fragile and unique environment would be catastrophic; it is madness to allow such reckless companies to drill for more of the oil that is causing the region to melt in the first place. Our campaign to make the frozen north a no-go area for the oil industry will continue.”

So far, Cairn’s $600-million oil exploration has come up empty-handed.

Cairn reported last month that it planned to plug and abandon the Lady Franklin 7-1 exploration well, about 300 km off Nuuk, after it failed to find oil there.

Then it announced Sept. 13 it had little to show for two wells it drilled off Disko Island this summer.

Cairn said Sept. 28 it was plugging its Delta-1 well on the Napariaq block off western Greenland after it encountered no sign of oil.

The well 365 km offshore Aasiaat reached a depth of 2,977 meters “without encountering hydrocarbon shows,” the company said in a statement.