Greenpeace Blocks Total's Danish Shale Gas Project

Greenpeace activists climbed a shale gas drilling rig operated by Total in Denmark on Monday, and the French energy company has asked police for help, an official at Total Denmark said.

 

The head of local police in northern Denmark, John Lamp Henriksen, said 15 to 20 activists had entered the facility and a handful had climbed the rig.

 

Protests by locals and activists at the Northern Jutland town of Dybvad where the rig is located have delayed delivery trucks since April 5, but this marked the first occupation of the rig's premises.

 

"We're looking at this day by day, and we would much rather have them come down and talk to us than come up and talk to them," Henriksen told Reuters.

 

Henrik Nicolaisen, project manager of Total Denmark, said the company estimated that the occupation could cost it hundreds of thousands of Danish crowns (tens of thousands of dollars) each day.

 

"It's getting cold out here, but we have one activist saying that they'll stay as long as there's food, and we have a food collection on the way," Greenpeace campaign officer Birgitte Lesanner told Reuters from the rig.

 

She said police had yet to ask the protesters to leave.

 

The drill site is one of two Danish shale gas exploration projects in which Total is involved. Nicolaisen said he could not rule out that the protest would affect the other project, located in the North Zealand region.

 

"The result of our drilling in Northern Jutland is vital to how we act on the other license. So it will have an indirect effect," Nicolaisen said.

 

Greenpeace complained in July 2014 that a report on the Dybvad project's environmental impact needed to be more thorough.

 

Denmark has funded 20 percent of the project in Dybvad through the energy foundation Nordsofonden.