Zürcher Nachrichten - Norway, environmentalists back in court over oil field permits

In January 2024, the Oslo district court ruled that the permits awarded for three North Sea fields were invalid because the CO2 emissions generated by the future burning of oil and gas in the fields had not been taken into account.

The Scandinavian branch of Greenpeace and the Natur og Ungdom ("Nature and Youth") organisation appeared to have won a decisive victory, but Norway's energy ministry, which awarded the permits for the Tyrving, Breidablikk and Yggdrasil offshore sites, appealed the verdict.

The ministry "considers that there has been no procedural error and there is no reason to stop the projects", its legal representatives Omar Saleem Rathore and Goran Osterman Thengs told AFP in an email this week.

The state said the operators of the fields, Equinor and Aker BP, had conducted additional impact studies to address concerns raised in the lower court's ruling.

These assessments "conducted after the fact, that is to say after the fields were found to be illegal, aren't worth the paper they're written on," said the head of Greenpeace Norway, Frode Pleym.

"What needs to be quantified are the real emissions that emanate from the burning (of the fossil fuels), and in particular what impact these emissions will have on human lives, nature and the climate," he told AFP.

Norway, western Europe's biggest oil and gas producer, is regularly criticised for its huge fossil fuel output, which has brought immense prosperity to the nation.

The case comes amid growing legal battles over climate change.

In a milestone but non-binding ruling, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in July that climate change was an "urgent and existential threat" and that countries had a legal duty to prevent harm from their planet-warming pollution.

"A state's failure to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions -- including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licenses or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies -- may constitute an internationally wrongful act," the ICJ said.

- Like Trump? -

After the conclusion of the Oslo appeals court proceedings on September 4, judges will decide on the permits' validity and whether operations can continue at the contested sites.

The lower court judge had barred the state from taking any decisions related to the fields, effectively halting their production and development, until all legal channels had been exhausted.

But to the dismay of the two environmental groups, the government has authorised the continuation of operations.

Breidablikk and Tyrving are currently operational, while Yggdrasil -- whose reserves were just revised upwards -- is due to begin producing in 2027.

The environmental groups have called for them all to be stopped immediately.

In legal documents submitted to the appeals court, they cite experts who claim that the total greenhouse gas emissions from the three fields alone would lead to "around 109,100 deaths linked to heat by 2100" and reduce the size of glaciers worldwide by "6.6 billion cubic metres".

The state has meanwhile argued that the economic, social and industrial consequences of a temporary halt would be disproportionate.

"It is up to elected politicians to determine Norway's energy and climate policy," Rathore and Thengs insisted.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent reduction of Russian gas to Europe, Norway has "played a crucial role as a stable energy supplier" to the continent, they added.

But Greenpeace's Pleym compared the moves by Norwegian authorities to US President Donald Trump, putting themselves above the country's own laws.

"The rule of law is under threat in Trump's America and certain other European countries," he said.

"Norway remains thankfully a solid democracy, but even here the state's actions play a central role in maintaining confidence in the system."

R.Bernasconi--NZN