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Our Arctic Neighbors: Cairn gets Greenland’s OK for 2 offshore wells Scotland-based producer approved for two of the four wells it hopes to complete this year; says it has relief well capability Petroleum News
On June 16, Greenland’s Cabinet gave Cairn Energy approval to drill two wells offshore western Greenland along the Disko West portion of Davis Strait, the iceberg-filled stretch of water between Greenland and Canada’s Nunavut.
The wells are the first of four the small Scotland-based producer is scheduled to drill this summer as part of a multiyear $400 million exploration campaign that Bloomberg reported in May will be closely watched by producers such as ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron, which also hold rights offshore Greenland.
Cairn will be the first company in recent years to drill offshore Greenland.
David Nisbet, Cairn’s head of corporate affairs, said his company will take every precaution in the event it discovers oil in Davis Strait.
“We will have a support fleet of vessels, about a dozen vessels, working alongside the two rigs,” Nisbet said. “We have a relief well capability.”
A sixth-generation dynamically positioned drillship, the Stena Forth, has been contracted to start operations in the summer drilling season, which runs from June to October.
Cairn said it has 30 prospects in West Disko where it conducted extensive seismic offshore in 2008, identifying the Disko West area on the Sigguk and Eqqua blocks.
The company also plans to shoot 2,500 kilometers of 2-D seismic in the area this year.
Cairn’s offshore leases cover approximately 72,000 square kilometers with water depths ranging from 50 meters (164 feet) to 2,200 meters (1.4 miles).
Despite worldwide concerns about the safety of offshore drilling since the April blowout and resultant leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the government of Greenland has remained a staunch proponent of exploration off its shores, hoping that an oil discovery will provide a badly needed economic boon for the country.
—The Associated Press contributed to this report
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