ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners called yesterday on oil explorer Cairn Energy to live up to its corporate responsibility commitments to local communities in the areas in which it operates.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland challenged the Edinburgh-based firm to follow through and withdraw from an agreement with miner Vedanta Resources to sell most of its stake in Cairn India.
FoE Scotland highlighted human rights concerns about London-based Vedanta and its own operations around the world.
The campaign group is also alarmed over plans, which the sale of the Cairn India stake would help to finance, for oil exploration and drilling in Greenland.
Juliet Swann, head of projects and campaigns at FoE Scotland, said: “Attempts to extract oil from beneath the Arctic continental shelf completely fail to acknowledge the inextricable link between the disappearance of ice floes and fossil fuel exploitation.”
Meanwhile, reports said India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Oil India and GAIL, could make a joint bid for the majority stake in Cairn India.
It is thought India’s petroleum ministry wants ONGC to be given a chance to buy the holding.
Aberdeen-based oil explorer Dana Petroleum will press South Korea’s national oil company KNOC to drop its £1.7billion hostile takeover bid and raise the offer in return for board recommendation, it was reported yesterday.