Greenpeace Is Set Back By Cairn in Greenland

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Greenpeace activists have been barred from further disrupting oil company Cairn Energy PLC’s controversial Arctic drilling campaign offshore Greenland, after a Dutch court Thursday granted the Edinburgh-based firm a requested injunction.

Greenpeace, which said the campaign is damaging the region’s fragile ecosystem, can’t come within 500 meters of Cairn’s rigs for a period of six months, a sufficient length of time for the company to complete its exploratory drilling program this summer, the court said.

If Greenpeace defies the order, it will have to pay Cairn damages of 50,000 euros ($73,000) a day, but no more than 1 million euros in the case of multiple violations of the order. Cairn had asked the court to fineGreenpeace 2 million euros for each day its drilling activities were disrupted.

Greenpeace’s lawyer, Phon van den Biesen, said he was disappointed by the decision. However, he said the judge didn’t question whetherGreenpeace’s actions were reasonable in raising public interest and that the court had said it was remarkable that oil-spill response plans hadn’t been made public.

Cairn said in a written statement that “it respects the rights of individuals and organizations to express their views but cannot allow actions that might threaten the safety of its employees or the protesters involved.”

However, using legal action to stop Greenpeace from campaigning can backfire on energy companies, who run the risk of appearing draconian and heavy-handed. This was the experience of BP PLC in 1997 when it won an injunction stopping Greenpeace from disrupting its drilling off the west coast of Scotland.

BP ended up withdrawing a GBP 1.4 million ($2.3 million) damages claim after public opinion massed against the oil giant, which was perceived to be picking on a group of plucky activists exercising their right to protest.

Greenpeace has a long history of direct action to protest against what it regards as activities harmful to the environment.

In 1985, the organization generated international headlines when a trawler used by Greenpeace to protest nuclear-weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean was sunk by French intelligence operatives.

Oil companies have been a particular target of Greenpeace. In 1995, the group successfully forced Anglo-Dutch major Royal Dutch Shell PLC to dismantle its Brent Spar North Sea oil-storage facility on land rather than dumping it at sea.

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