Cairn takes on Greenpeace in court over spill plan

A Dutch judge today asked Cairn Energy why it had not made public the oil-spill response plan it prepared for the Greenland government ahead of this year’s Arctic drilling campaign

A GREENPEACE source said an Amsterdam District Court judge queried the company’s decision not to make the plan public during a hearing of Cairn’s application for an injunction against the environmental group. If Cairn’s application succeeds, Greenpeace faces fines of €2 million ($2.9 million) a day for every day any future protest disrupts the company’s Arctic campaign. Greenpeace later issued a release quoting the judge, who it did not name, as saying that by being transparent perhaps Cairn had an opportunity to make the spill plan stronger. However, Cairn said that the judge’s query came as part of court proceedings and was not an order to make the plan public. It added that the Greenlandi