LONDON (Reuters) - Greenland is due to publish its oil spill response plan later on Monday, the territory's deputy minister for Mineral Resources said, in a move which could dampen some of the controversy surrounding oil exploration in its waters.
"Our Minister is going to announce that we will make public the oil spill contingency plan," Deputy Minister for Mineral Resources Jorn Skov Nielson told Reuters on Monday.
Environmental group Greenpeace in June lodged a complaint with the Greenland parliament calling for the release of an oil spill response plan as it argues cleaning up a spill in the remote sea would be difficult.
The publication of oil spill response plans for the Gulf of Mexico at the height of the BP oil spill last summer caused embarrassment for the oil industry when these showed companies had offered overly optimistic assessments of how they would tackle spills.
The risk of leaks was in focus on Monday after oil major Royal Dutch Shell said a ruptured pipeline spilled 1,300 barrels of oil in the North Sea.
British oil explorer Cairn Energy has faced protests from Greenpeace during the past 12 months as it has drilled a number of wells off the coast of Greenland, none of which have yet found oil.
Bigger rivals such as Exxon Mobil, the world's largest non-government-controlled oil company by market capitalization, have also acquired exploration acreage in Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and are waiting to drill.
In both the UK and Norway, oil spill response plans are available on public request, respective spokesmen for the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Norwegian Coastal Administration said.
(Reporting by Sarah Young)