Oil spill expert condemns Cairn’s Arctic response plan

Environmental campaigners have accused a Scottish oil company of “breathtaking irresponsibility” over its plans for clearing up a possible spill in the Arctic.

Greenpeace raised concerns that the oil spill response plan drawn up by Edinburgh firm Cairn Energy was inadequate for the fragile region.

It includes measures such as cutting out blocks of oiled ice, which could be thawed in a heated warehouse to separate out the oil, and deploying portable lights to help with a clean-up during winter darkness.

The activist group, which opposes drilling in the Arctic, asked marine biologist and oil spill expert Professor Richard Steiner to analyse the response plan from Cairn, which has been drilling off Greenland.

Prof Steiner suggested that Cairn had understated the potential size and impact of a blow-out and leak from a well in the area, and had “dramatically overestimated” the effectiveness of any response plan.

The plan, published after pressure from Greenpeace for it to be made public, admits that conventional methods of clearing up an oil spill such as using booms and dispersant would be difficult in icy Arctic waters.

And in the report, the company acknowledged that a clean-up might be delayed for at least five months while it waited for the ice to thaw.

It said: “During ice conditions the response may be limited to monitoring the spill, with recovery operations resuming once the thaw is complete.”

The rocky coast of Greenland would make onshore clean-up hard, while a range of wildlife from puffins to fish and crustaceans could be hit.

And during the winter, when the sea ices over, any response would be limited to monitoring the spill, before resuming operations once a thaw was complete.

But the response plan said the window of time during which drilling was taking place allowed sufficient time for a relief well to be drilled if necessary before the sea froze over.

A spokeswoman for Cairn said the plans had been reviewed and approved by a number of third parties, including the Greenland government and an independent company Oil Spill Response.

“All are satisfied that the plan is robust and appropriately designed to deal with an incident in this area,” she said.

But Greenpeace campaigner Vicky Wyatt said: “The company offers only giant assumptions and pie-in-the-sky solutions.

“Cairn Energy is showing breathtaking irresponsibility by completely failing to offer any detail as to how it would really deal with a spill in ice-covered seas, if indeed it could at all.”

She said the company was playing roulette with “one of the most important and fragile environments on the planet” and should be stopped.

Greenpeace has been staging a series of protests, including invading drilling rigs operated by Cairn Energy, in a bid to prevent oil exploration in the Arctic, which it fears would be damaging to the region’s environment and the climate.

WWF Scotland’s head of policy Dr Dan Barlow said: “We have voiced our concerns about Cairn Energy’s decision to explore for oil in extreme and sensitive environments on several occasions.

“Unlike Shell’s recent spill in the North Sea, there will be no convenient rough seas to help disperse the oil and low temperatures will mean that little of it will evaporate either.

“To protect the environment and tackle climate change we need to rapidly end our addiction to oil.

“We believe Scottish companies like Cairn Energy should be leaders in clean energy instead of desperately seeking to wring out every last drop of oil no matter the risks.”

But Jorn Skov Nielsen, director of the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said that there were good protective measures in place to stop a spill, and a robust response plan if there should be a leak.

He said the plan had been evaluated by a number of authorities. “We feel it lives up to good international practice and we do believe it’s a good, robust plan,” he said.

Simon Thomson, chief executive of Cairn Energy, has insisted that the focus of operations is on prevention.

When the spill response plan was published recently, he said: “In the unlikely event of a serious incident, such as an oil spill, we believe we have put in place a thorough and robust contingency plan.”