Greenpeace activists attempted to hand over three gifts — a copy of the IPCC report, the Kyoto protocol and a StatoilHydro scandal note — to Alberta environmental minister Rob Renner during during his meeting with the Norwegian minister of environment, Erik Solheim.
Greenpeace activists waited outside the meeting with banners reading "Stop the Tar Sands" and handed him a copy of the Kyoto Protocol as well as the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unfortunately, Renner decided to sneak in and out the back door and said he was not ready to talk to either Greenpeace or the media that had shown up outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The activists were campaigning against oil giant StatoilHydro and its attempts to falsely "green" its image. StatoilHydro is a Norwegian-based international leader in oil and gas exploration and development with high stakes in the tar sands. This spring, StatoilHydro bought North American Oil Sands Corporation (NAOSC) for $12 billion (CAD), giving StatoilHydro access to 1,100 square kilometers of Boreal forest in the Athabasca region, beneath which are tar sands deposits equivalent to 2.2 billion barrels of oil.
Greenpeace is demanding that the Norwegian state, which owns 65 per cent of the shares in the company, instruct StatoilHydro to immediately abandon its tar sands project in Alberta. Greenpeace is calling for the proposed $100 billion investment to be spent instead on renewable energy .
On top of its recent ventures into the Alberta tar sands fields, and the sensitive Norwegian Lofoten Islands, StatoilHydro has recently been responsible for a number of environmental scandals that challenge the company's claim to be environmentally responsible…
August 2008: North Sea leak of oil process water
Oily process water from the Tordis Operation on the North Sea Utsira formation (where Statoil also has a carbon capture and storage project for the Sleipner field), built up excessive pressure and broke through the formation. This significant leak was not detected by any system before it was observed visually by personnel on a nearby platform. This is very worrisome, given that StatoilHydro is proposing to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) in its Alberta tar sands operation.
May 2008: Unauthorized night operation had "large accident potential"
In an unauthorized 'hot tapping' operation, StatoilHydro workers welded a pipe under full pressure to save time and money, leading to an uncontrolled discharge of gas and oily water and evacuation of platform personnel for four days. The risky operation during the last hour of the night shift was not cleared with authorities nor workers union. This is seen by many as another example how Statoil prioritizes profit over environmental protection. The Petroleum Authority characterizes the event as having "large accident potential".
February 2008: Cost overruns and accidental carbon dioxide emissions at Hammerfest
StatoilHydro's prestige project at Melkoya near Hammerfest in North Norway continues to cause problems for the company, as they acknowledge cost overruns at more than 47% of budget presented to the Parliament in 2003. In addition to cost overruns and delays, the plant is also suffering from technical problems which led to unplanned and illegal emissions of several million tonnes of carbon dioxide during testing of the gas treatment facility in the fall of 2007.
December 2007: Oil leak during buoy loading
A subsea pipeline that was not designed for subsea buoy-loading operations broke during oil transfer from the aging Statoil platform Statfjord A to a transport vessel. The spill of 27,500 barrels of crude oil into the North Sea was not identified by any response system before the crew spotted the oil on the surface. The Petroleum Authority concluded that "failure to allocate clear responsibilities, lack of risk understanding and design shortcomings in the loading system" were among the underlying causes of this second largest oil spill in Norwegian history.
Corruption and bribery in Libya, Iran
Over the last two years, corruption scandals have been documented in StatoilHydro's operations in Libya and Iran. In Iran, the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv covered a series of bribery payments to Iranian 'consultants' during a 2002-2003 process to gain access to oil fields. StatoilHydro was fined in Norway and the US for this bribery, and a number of top executives were fired.
The Libya corruption was exposed in 2007 and 2008, and refers to illegal payments made in 2000-2001. After further investigation, several top management directors were fired in October 2008. There have been recent reports that StatoilHydro is still providing 'signature bonuses' to corrupt dictators.