Oil companies should not drill for oil in Arctic waters, the head of French oil group Total, Christophe de Margerie, told the Financial Times in an interview published on its website on Wednesday.

De Margerie said: "A leak would do too much damage to the image of the company" and that "oil on Greenland would be a disaster."

The newspaper noted that Total has several interests in gas exploration in the Arctic particularly in Russia, beneath the Barents Sea, and that De Marjorie held that energy companies could cope more easily with any gas leak than with a leak of oil.