Save the Arctic? No thanks, says UK Energy Minister

Posted by bex — 15 June 2011 at 12:37pm - Comments
Cairn's rig - the most controversial in the world - about to start Arctic drilli
All rights reserved. Credit: Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace
Cairn's rig - the most controversial in the world - about to start Arctic drilling

While our campaign to save the Arctic from risky oil drilling has been playing out in Greenlandic waters and Dutch courtrooms over the past few weeks, the UK government has stayed fairly quiet on the question of deepwater oil drilling in the Arctic.

Until this week. On Monday, a UK Minister waded into the row on Arctic drilling - and came out in support of Big Oil.

Energy Minister Charles Hendry told an energy conference that Arctic drilling is "entirely legitimate" and that, "given the ability to carry out this work safely, this should be part of the work of the industry".

The problem is that "the ability to carry out this work safely" in the Arctic is not a given. In fact, safe deepwater drilling in the Arctic can't be done; experts say that the freezing temperatures and remote location mean a deep water blow-out in the Arctic would be an irreversible disaster, and UK government officials have themselves admitted in private that a spill in the Arctic would be "near impossible" to clear up.

This, we suspect, is why Cairn Energy - the company leading the race to exploit the Arctic - still refuses to publish its Oil Spill Response Plan. Despite requests by almost 50,000 people, an extraordinary chastisement by a judge in Amsterdam last week, and the boarding of Cairn's controversial Arctic Rig by 18 Greenpeace activists trying to find the elusive plan, the world is none the wiser about how Cairn plans to handle the real risk of an oil spill in the beautiful and fragile environment of the Arctic.

With our 18 activists in prison in Nuuk and Cairn wielding a legal hammer in Amsterdam to stop us exposing the huge risks it's taking with the Arctic wilderness, the UK Energy Minister has come out in support of Big Oil's ambitions to drill in the Arctic.

Big Oil, in this case, means the many companies hoping to follow Cairn into the Arctic, including BP who, last week (a year after five million tonnes of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico) restated the company's Arctic ambitions.

Back in 2006, after returning from his trip to the Norwegian Arctic to pose with huskies, Cameron told us: "Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing the world and we must have a much greater sense of urgency about tackling it."

Now, with a second energy minister capitulating to Big Oil (the first being Chris Huhne, who has personally backed BP’s Arctic venture in Russia), David Cameron needs to step up and tell us where the priorities of "the greenest government ever" lie: with Big Oil, or with the fragile wildernesses of the Arctic?  

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