Greenland new promised land for oil firms
Large, untapped oil and gas reserves have been attracting oil firms
to Greenland, which hopes the resources will help speed up its
independence, but there is unwanted attention from environmentalists.
"We have never seen as much interest for oil exploration in
Greenland," said Joern Skov Nielsen, who heads the territory's oil and
minerals office.
A fisherman sailing on the Ice Fjord of Ilulissat, Greenland.
Large, untapped oil and gas reserves have been attracting oil
firms to Greenland, which hopes the resources will help speed up
its independence. AFP |
Greenland's government in November distributed seven prospecting
blocs in the Baffin Bay, west of Greenland, among eight major oil
companies, including ConocoPhillips of the United States, Anglo-Dutch
giant Shell and Scotland's Cairn Energy.
According to the US geological survey (USGS), more than a fifth of
the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lie north of the Polar
circle.
Some 84 percent of these are located at sea, and they would
altogether represent 13 percent of the world's oil resources and 30
percent of the planet's natural gas.
Those estimates put the oil reserves in Greenlandic waters at some 52
billion oil barrels, 17 billion of which would lie between the island's
west coast and the eastern coast of Canada's Baffin island, and 31.4
billion to Greenland's north-east.
Cairn Energy, which heads the race to capture Greenlandic oil and
gas, drilled three oil wells last year and deemed them successful.
Its operations were interrupted by Greenpeace for two days, but it
was not enough to deter the company, which will be drilling four more
wells this year.
"2011 was our third year of operation in Greenland and we will invest
some 500 million dollars there this year bringing our total investment
there to more than one billion dollars," the company's commercial
director Simon Thomson told AFP.
And Greenland's fossil fuels are not only promising for the companies
rushing to exploit them.
The Greenlandic government is also hoping oil and gas will lead the
way to gaining economic and political independence from Denmark. "Oil
has the greatest potential to help us achieve economic independence,"
said Ove Karl Berthelsen, minister for industry and mineral resources
minister of Greenland, where most of the 56,000 mostly Inuit inhabitants
survive on fishing and subsidies from Copenhagen.
The head of Greenland's government, Kuupik Kleist, told a conference
of Inuit leaders in Ottawa in February offshore oil and gas should even
become the island's main economic activity.
"The status quo is not acceptable for Greenland. We do not want to be
dependent solely on traditional activities like fishing and hunting," he
said.
Still, he said, the Greenlandic government is conscious of the risks
associated with the exploitation of fossil fuels.
"It is essential to find a balance between economic development and
the other interests of society ... and to involve the population in the
decision making process."
Berthelsen told AFP that Nuuk "does not want oil exploration to
destroy our main resource, fishing" and the Greenland government
tightened regulations around deep-sea drilling following the recent oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Encouraged by the interest in its last licensing round, Greenland
will launch a new one at the end of this year for the north-east of the
island.
AFP |