Cairn Energy has confirmed that it has found gas off the western coast of Greenland. The Edinburgh-based oil and gas exploration company made the discovery in the Baffin Bay Basin, 175km from the island of Disko. Read the full story

Greenpeace has announced that it has been blocked by a Danish warship in its efforts to sail a protest boat to an oil drilling platform off the coast of Greenland. The environmental group’s ship, Esperanza, was apparently halted outside a 500-metre exclusion zone around the Cairn Energy rig, 200km from Aasiaat, on Greenland’s west coast. In an email statement issued on Monday, Greenpeace said Denmark, which holds sovereignty over Greenland, had sent a ship to confront their vessel. Read the full story

Eyjan.is reports that the actions of sewer and sewerage maintenance workers in South Iceland have caused pollution in the Thingvellir national park – a UNESCO world heritage site. Read the full story

The Cairn Energy oil exploration group has confirmed that it has sold a 51 percent stake in its Indian arm to help fund its project off the coast of Greenland. Just as offshore drilling becomes more controversial in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the Edinburgh-based group will return a “substantial sum” to investors and add to its two rigs already positioned 200km from Aasiaat, on Greenland’s west coast. Read the full story

Farmers in southern Greenland have spoken about the benefits of global warming, as the biggest block of ice since the sixties breaks off the country’s northwest coast. According to researchers at a US university, an ice sheet measuring 260-sq kilometres – the largest since 1962 – detached itself from the Petermann Glacier in Greenland this week. Read the full story

The American daughter company of Iceland’s Prentsmidjan Oddi hf., Oddi Printing, has opened an office in New York in addition to its existing premises in Pennsylvania. Read the full story

People importing methane powered cars to Iceland are exempt from paying import duties, which might seem like a good thing; but it does not help people eager to convert their existing petrol or diesel cars to also use methane. Read the full story

Finland’s forests are absorbing double the amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they were 20 years ago. Wooded areas in the country can now take up 42 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas annually, over half of the 70 million tonnes emitted by Finland in 2008. Read the full story

Cairn Energy is to begin drilling in Baffin Bay after being given the green light for tests from Greenland’s government. According to KNR, company ships, the Nordic and Vidar Viking, have already arrived on the scene and drilling is scheduled to start shortly. Read the full story

The Finnish government has endorsed applications from two companies for the construction of two new nuclear reactors. Read the full story