"Oil spill in Norway stirs fears for Arctic"

Favourable winds were set to keep an oil slick 10km long and 5km wide from reaching the Norwegian shore although rough seas hampered a clean-up operation, the energy group StatoilHydro said on Thursday.

The accident has stirred debate about the risks of opening up new areas of Norwegian waters for oil and gas exploration, especially in the Arctic, where spills would have bigger impact.

Norway's second biggest ever spill of 25 000 barrels of oil occurred on Wednesday during loading onto a tanker at StatoilHydro's Statfjord field. The spillage is about a tenth of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster off Alaska.

"We are treating the Statfjord spill with the greatest concern," StatoilHydro Chief Executive Helge Lund said in a statement. "Our first priority is to do everything we can to minimise the environmental impact."

...Environmentalists said the spill was a warning against exploration in the far north Norwegian and Barents Seas, where frigid waters and harsh Arctic conditions would make any spill harder to naturally dissolve or to clean up...