'Stop The Drill' protesters have been commended by the Green Party in Northern Ireland for continuing to keep the exploratory drill issue at Woodburn Forest near Carrickfergus in the public domain.
Workers at Infrastrata have now ended the drilling after failing to locate any oil in the area.
Green Party leader Steven Agnew said lessons must be learned in terms of policing and planning.
He said: "This exploratory drill for oil should never have happened in the first place. Planning regulations were apparently sufficiently robust and the license to drill granted by default.
"There are many questions still to be answered over the policing of the drill site at Woodburn Forest, not least arrest of those asserting their right to protest peacefully.
"Perhaps most importantly we must be wary of exaggerated claims of oil and gas companies. We were told there could be 25m barrels of oil at Woodburn; that proved to be utter nonsense.
"This whole exercise driven by a commercial company seeking to increase its profits without regard to due process or the environment, has generated a lot of ill-feeling in the local community."
(CD/LM)
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