Blockades hit North Sea oil, gas facilities
Protesters have launched a coordinated, Europe-wide wave of blockades and demonstrations aimed at highlighting the continued exploitation of North Sea oil and gas and its harm to the environment.
Fossil fuel processing facilities in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom were targeted in the action, which began on Saturday.
Infrastructure impacted included oil and gas terminals, refineries and ports where fossil fuels are handled.
Some of the blockades resulted in the complete paralysis of facilities while others did not significantly impact their operation.
Extinction Rebellion, the climate activist organization that coordinated the blockades, said in a statement, “Under the campaign North Sea Fossil Free, acts of civil disobedience are happening all around the North Sea.”
The group said the governments of the six countries were “permitting new fossil extraction infrastructure, harming not only the North Sea ecosystem, but also committing the whole world to dangerous levels of warming”, which is why the nations were targeted.
“Activists have come together … to demand all North Sea oil countries align their drilling plans with the Paris Agreement now,” Extinction Rebellion said, referring to the deal struck in 2015 in which nations vowed to keep the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 C above preindustrial levels and preferably limit it to 1.5 C.
The protests followed the release of a report by campaign group Oil Change International that said Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK had all failed to align their oil and gas policies with their promises under the Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.
The report criticizes the nations for making promises while simultaneously exploring and licensing new oil and gas fields, and says Norway has been the furthest among them from delivering on its promises.
Jonas Kittelsen, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion Norway, said as activists blocked the entrance to a petroleum refinery in Rafnes, on the country’s southeast coast, his country seemed to be putting money ahead of the planet’s health.
“I’m ashamed to be a Norwegian,” The Guardian newspaper quoted him as saying. “Norway profits massively from aggressively expanding our oil and gas sector, causing mass suffering and death globally. My government portrays us as better than the rest of the world, which we are not.”
The flurry of demonstrations continued on Monday when Extinction Rebellion activists spread fake oil on the ground outside the GB News UK television news station.
Branding the broadcaster a “puppet TV station” for the fossil fuel industry, protesters picketed its studio in London, forcing workers to enter through another door.