Injunction to stop oil protesters at depot
AN oil firm has secured a High Court injunction aimed at stopping more environmental protesters from targeting its fuel processing sites, including Kingsbury terminal, near Tamworth.
Valero Energy also operates Pembroke refinery in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, and five other fuel terminals across the UK. It was granted the injunction against a number of environmental groups and “persons unknown” earlier this week.
Kingsbury has been the site of a number of recent protests and Warwickshire Police said there had been 34 arrests over last weekend at the terminal, where protesters have tunnelled under a major access route.
The weekend’s protests follow a wave of similar demonstrations across the country by Just Stop Oil, a group of climate change activists affiliated with Extinction Rebellion, which have seen hundreds of protesters arrested amid major disruption.
Valero also owns and operates sites in Manchester, Cardiff, Plymouth and Avonmouth. Following a hearing, Mr Justice Bennathan made the injunction in terms which ban anyone from damaging any part of the land at each of the firm’s sites, from “affixing themselves to any other person or object” on the land or parts of access roads and from building any structure.
The injunction also prohibits abandoning vehicles or other items on parts of the sites’ access roads, as well as tunnelling under the roads or occupying existing tunnels. But the judge refused to widen the injunction to include blocking, endangering, slowing down, preventing, or obstructing the free passage of traffic on the access roads, and refusing to leave the roads when asked by police.
The judge said: “The order I made forbids various acts of trespass, including the blocking of gates on Valero’s premises, and forbids acts of obstructing certain specified roadways, including public highways, in various semi-permanent ways. It does so for all seven sites. I made that order having been satisfied that: were the underlying claims ever to reach trial, Valero has a strong basis for an action for trespass and private and public nuisance.”