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BP’s new chief executive Bernard Looney starts his new
job with legal headache
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Greenpeace granted permission to challenge legality of
BP’s North Sea drilling permit
Greenpeace has today [TUES] been given the green light to
challenge BP’s North Sea drilling permit, one day before BP’s new
boss Bernard Looney takes over.
Looney faces a legal headache on his first day in the job
[WEDS FEB 5], as Greenpeace argues that the government was wrong
to award BP a permit to drill in the Vorlich oil fields, north of
Inverness, because it failed to properly consult the public on
its decision. Greenpeace activists staged a protest there last
June in an attempt to block BP from accessing the 30 million
barrels of oil in the Vorlich field [1].
At a hearing in the High Court, Mrs Justice Lang granted
Greenpeace permission to proceed with a judicial review case
against the government’s Department for Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy. BP is named as an interested party in the
case.
John Sauven, executive director for Greenpeace UK, said:
“BP has been given free rein by the government to drill for more
oil and gas in the North Sea, without proper public consultation
and without any consideration of the devastating impact that the
use of this oil will have on our climate.
“We took action last year and boarded BP’s rig to stop this
from happening. Now we will fight to prove that BP should never
have been there in the first place.”
In June last year, Greenpeace activists boarded BP’s oil
rig, Paul B Loyd Jnr, as it was being towed out to sea in the
Cromarty Firth. BP and its rig operator Transocean sought court
interdicts in a bid to stop the action, but Greenpeace activists
continued their peaceful protest for 12 days. In a separate legal
case, BP’s rig operator Transocean is seeking hefty fines and
jail sentences against Greenpeace and its executive director John
Sauven as punishment for breaching the
interdict.
Greenpeace’s judicial review hearing today follows a
successful case brought by Neil Garrick-Maidment of
the Seahorse
Trust last year, which challenged the
legality of permit granted to energy firm Carillion, on the
grounds that there had not been a proper public
consultation.
After the Seahorse case, business secretary agreed to carry out a
detailed review of the Offshore Petroleum Production and
Pipe-lines (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1999
and amend them following public consultation. As yet there has
been no public announcement on the progress of that
consultation.
The case will continue later this year, with the next
hearing expected between late April and mid-June.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS
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https://www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/news/press-releases/bp-receives-oga-approval-to-develop-vorlich-field-in-north-sea.html
