A fresh team of Greenpeace activists have
reboarded a BP oil rig in Scotland just hours after Police
Scotland declared the occupation
over.
Last night, police boats and climbers managed
to remove two Greenpeace activists who had spent over 70 hours
blocking the rig from leaving Cromarty Firth, north of Inverness.
But just after 4am this morning, two new climbers, Andrew and
Meena, boarded the structure and climbed up to a gantry on one of
the legs.
Rig workers notified the activists of an
interdict - the Scottish law equivalent of an injunction -
preventing them from accessing the rig, but Greenpeace is
continuing the occupation in defiance of the
injunction.
The occupation started on Sunday evening and
has now seen three separate climbing teams working in shifts to
prevent the rig from reaching the Volrich field, where it plans
to drill a well giving BP access to 30 million barrels of
oil.
Greenpeace UK’s executive director John
Sauven said:
“Our climbers are back on the oil rig and
determined to stay for as long as possible. BP are heading out to
drill a new well giving them access to 30 million barrels of oil
- something we can’t afford in the middle of a climate emergency.
We can’t give up and let oil giants carry on with business as
usual because that means giving up on a habitable planet and our
kids’ future. The UK
government has announced a target of net zero greenhouse
emissions by 2050 - we have started to enforce
it.”
The two climbers arrested last night remain in
custody and should appear in court
today.
At its last AGM, BP bowed to pressure from
shareholders by backing a motion asking the company to
demonstrate it is aligned with the Paris climate agreement. Yet
BP is still planning to
expand its oil and gas production at a time when it needs to be
dramatically reduced.
Greenpeace argues the business models of
companies like BP are in direct opposition to efforts to prevent
catastrophic climate change:
-
BP is outspending
other oil majors on
efforts to lobby against climate action. In
March an
investigation by
Unearthed
revealed BP successfully lobbied the Trump
administration to weaken regulations that would have
prevented the release of millions of tonnes of the potent
greenhouse gas methane;
-
BP capital expenditure
remains heavily skewed towards fossil fuel, in 2018 spent
around $16 billion adding to oil and gas reserves,
with $500
million - just over 3% -
being spent on alternatives to fossil fuels. As Bob
Dudley admitted to the Washington
Post: “If someone said,
‘Here’s $10bn to invest in renewables,’ we wouldn’t know how
to do it”.
