Company strikes oil in the Arctic

For some this is going to be hailed as great news. Personally I am saddened that companies continue searching for oil in areas that have yet to suffer from a man made oil spill.

An oil company striking oil in a new region is like blood in the water for sharks. Soon the Arctic will be a target for Oil companies seeking big profits. With the surge of oil rigs there will undoubtedly be accidents for which the Arctic and its marine life will suffer.

We are taking far too long in making the switch to clean energy. Society must push aside special interest groups and force politicians to stop blocking clean energy while supporting dirty energy. The technologies are out there and are waiting for proper funding and adoption.

Find by Cairn Energy off Greenland could open door to huge reserves of oil – and potential for more environmental disasters

A British oil firm will tomorrow announce that it has struck oil off Greenland, a find that could trigger a rush to exploit oil reserves in the pristine waters of the Arctic.

Cairn Energy, the first company to win permission to drill for oil in this sensitive environment, will break the news to the London stock market along with its half-yearly financial results.

The company declined to comment tonight, but sources confirmed that hydrocarbons had been found, and Greenland's foreign office said it was hopeful Cairn would have something positive to reveal.

The news will delight the oil industry, which has long believed the Arctic harbours some of the last huge reserves.

It will also delight a Greenland government desperate to diversify its fragile economy away from a dependence on fishing, tourism and cash handouts from Denmark, which still formally has sovereignty over the world's largest island.

But the hoped-for Cairn strike – the viability of which must still be assessed – will alarm Greenpeace and other activists who have been campaigning to stop drilling on the grounds that any accident would be disastrous. Opposition has grown since the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Today the Greenpeace ship Esperanza was confronted by a Danish warship in the area. The Danish navy warned Greenpeace the ship would be boarded if it breaches a 500-metre exclusion zone around two wells drilled by Cairn.

The confrontation came as scores of climate protesters targeted Cairn Energy's headquarters and six other businesses in Edinburgh during a day of action to protest against the funding of oil and gas industries by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The protests led to the shutting down of the RBS headquarters on the eastern edge of Edinburgh for the day, with thousands of staff told to work from home or other RBS offices. Twelve Climate Camp activists were arrested during the protest.

But the Arctic find will reinforce the reputation of Cairn in the oil industry. The firm has a strong track record of making discoveries in new frontiers. It made a name for itself by buying assets in Rajasthan, India, from Shell, then going on to make huge discoveries. Cairn has recently hived off this business at a big profit through a separate stock market flotation.

Asked whether he expected good news from Cairn, Mininnguaq Kleist, a senior official in Greenland's department of foreign affairs, said only: "Yes, I hope so." The department is choosing its words carefully because the exact scale of the oil find must still be assessed. The well has not been drilled to its true depth yet, and appraisal holes have to be made before the size of any reservoir can be assessed.

It is expensive to operate in deep waters and in such inhospitable terrain, and there would have to be a lot of oil in place to justify building platforms and pipelines. But most analysts believe the Arctic holds billions of new barrels – and the find will set their imaginations racing.

Changing Greenland - Viking Weather - National Geographic Magazine

A great article was published in National Geographic last June covering Greenland. Greenland is extremely mineral rich, and is going to be experiencing a massive transition in the near future.

A cool video that talks about oil dependency and the need for switching to green energy. I couldn't agree more!

Go beyond oil on Vimeo

We are currently building another windfarm near me....damn bp.