Published: Cairn's oil spill response plan!

Posted by bex — 15 August 2011 at 6:31pm - Comments
In the event of an oil spill, turn immediately to page 13
All rights reserved. Credit: Cairn Energy
Page one of Cairn's spill response plan

You know that oil spill response plan that Cairn has been refusing to publish? The one that tens of thousands of you asked to see? The one we went to the Arctic and to Cairn's Edinburgh HQ to look for? The one they were so worried we'd found, they slapped a legal interdict on us to prevent us from publishing it?

Well, it's been published. Not by Cairn - who have never wanted to release the plan - but by the government of Greenland which says it has "decided to publish the oil spill contingency plan in Greenland after having heard the wish of the public for such publication". That's your emails, that is. Thank you.

The response plan is here (warning: large pdf) - feel free to scrutinise it and let us know what you think in the comments. We will of course be doing our own analysis and posting it here soon.

At a glance, we see very little to allay the concerns of experts and analysts who believe a BP-style blow-out would wreck the fragile Arctic environment and its fisheries. We've also seen nothing to cause us to disagree with the claims of the UK government which, in private documents, said an Arctic spill would be ‘near impossible’ to clean up.

We'll keep looking. More soon.

Update: You can now read our review of Cairn's spill response plan, and ask Greenland to cancel Cairn's drilling programme.

"During ice conditions the response may be limited to monitoring the spill with recovery operations resuming once the thaw is complete." Page 90.

Can you imagine what would have happened if in the Gulf of Mexico BP said that they were just going to hang around for 6 months until the conditions are right for the clean-up to begin? The Arctic is not a safe place to be drilling for oil. 

I'm intrigued by the blacked out sections - it's like something out of a spy film.

I specifically like the paragraph on p101 where the name of the ware / accomadation vessel is blacked out, and then the name of the vessel, i,e Toisa Vigilant (see http://www.sealionshipping.co.uk/vigilant.htm) is left in the header of the table detailing what this mysterious ware / accomadation vessel is carrying.

So when I said it was something out of a spy film, I did of course mean an Austin Powers film....

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