Today, the Greenland Bureau of Mineral and Petroleum invited the world’s biggest oil companies to a meeting in Copenhagen that could be of extreme importance for the future of the Arctic. And we were there to make sure the oil representatives heard about what's really going on in the frozen north.
Greenland wants to open up an untouched area of its north-eastern waters; oil companies such as Shell, BP and Statoil have thrown all caution over board and are ready to drill. But today we decided to tell the oil companies the truth - and they were surprisingly willing to listen.
When the oil industry people arrived to the site of the meeting, our activists greeted them with a red carpet drenched in oil, and a huge floating banner that read “Protect the Arctic: No License to Drill”.
This should be enough to remind them they cannot ruin the pristine Arctic without resistance. Historically, the oil companies have time and again proven that they can ignore all criticism and don’t mind ruining the environment in their reckless hunt for profit.
We needed to be dead certain that, this time, we had the full attention of the oil companies. To do this, we arranged our own get-together just downstairs from the official meeting. We booked a meeting room and set it up with coffee and cake for the nice oil people.
When they arrived at the venue, our friendly, undercover activists (not the ones on the messy carpet) welcomed oil industry people and told them that the meeting was unfortunately moved to another floor due to the annoying Greenpeace protest.
All the oil company representatives – from Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Statoil and NunaOil – politely came along to our meeting instead of the real one with the representatives from Greenland. And instead of listening to a sales pitch about the economic prospects of ruining the Arctic, they were given a presentation which gave the truth about Arctic drilling. Even after half an hour, they didn’t have a clue about what was going on!
At least now the oil companies cannot claim they are unaware of the huge risks and environmental consequences of drilling in the Arctic.
Jon Burgwald is a Greenpeace campaigner in Denmark
