"Big Oil Firms Hoodwinked Into Attending Greenpeace Presentation" (APC; COP; RD-A; BP)

From the Wall Street Journal Europe's The Source blog:

The big oil firms’ executives exchanged business cards and small talk, while glancing out the windows at a group of Greenpeace activists gathered outside from the comfortable distance of a fourth-floor conference room at Nordatlantens Brygge Conference Center in Copenhagen.

It was Thursday morning. They were in town for an information meeting with Greenland’s government on the upcoming tendering round for the first exploration licenses offshore North-East Greenland, a yet unexplored and promising corner of the vast Arctic region.

Greenpeace had placed a massive flowing banner in the harbor in front of the conference center, and protesters stirred the serenity of a grey and moist fall morning in Denmark’s capital with loud chants of disapproval.

But as it turned out, Greenpeace also had another and more elaborate plan up its sleeve for this latest clash of many oil companies with the environmental group over plans to exploit the energy resources of the Arctic region. The meeting had been relocated to the fourth floor from the fifth at the last minute, a security measure against Greenpeace, a well-dressed young man had informed the 18 guests–executives from eight of the world’s largest oil companies: Royal Dutch Shell, Wintershall, Statoil, Kogas, NunaOil, ConocoPhillips, Anadarko and BP–as they crossed the lobby heading for the lift.

Their host offered comforting words, coffee and croissants, before they all grouped around a conference table to watch a 15-minute slideshow presentation on the prospects of offshore-Greenland oil exploration. Puzzled glances were exchanged across the table as the host ventured deeper into a long, illustrated speech about the potential risks to the environment posed by oil exploration in the Arctic area....MORE