SHARE
COPY LINK

OIL

Kenyan activists urge Lundin to delay drilling

Kenyan activists on Monday called for Swedish oil firm Lundin Petroleum to hold off its plans to search for oil and natural gas in the north-west Lake Turkana basin due to health concerns.

“We are seeking a delay before Lundin Petroleum starts to explore for oil,” Ali Gorai head of the Pastoralists Community Development Organization (PCDO) told AFP.

“We need experts to come and find out why there are infections – whether they were caused by other companies that explored for oil in our region in 1980s,” he added.

Previous exploration in the 1980s left waste that local people suspect polluted wells, causing infections among the Turkana people.

“People (were) exposed to dangerous chemicals. Cases, including cancer and respiratory disease, were not in our region there before oil exploration took place in the 1990s,” said Gorai.

“What we are saying is that Lundin Petroleum should delay a start in their exploration until we are fully told why our people have been affected by the previous ventures that have nothing to do with (the) company itself.”

Gorai said the firm has been surveying the areas and was expected to start operations next month, despite the lack of an environmental impact assessment on the impact of previous explorations.

In October last year, Swedish firm Lundin Petroleum signed an agreement with the Kenyan government to explore oil deposits in the lake’s Anza Basin over the next four years.

The basin, covering an area of some 14,748 square kilometres, is an extension of the Muglad Basin of Sudan, which has recoverable reserves of at least 300 million barrels of oil.

Kenyan geologists concluded that the north-western area was likely to have oil deposits after the discovery of oil and gas in neighbouring southern Sudan and along the Uganda-Democratic Republic of Congo border.

Lundin Petroleum scientists say oil exploration carried out in the 1980s in north-eastern region yielded indicators of possible oil or gas deposits.

Lundin Petroleum has been the subject of media controversy in the recent past due to its operations in sensitive parts of southern Sudan. The firm continues to drill for oil in the war-torn African country.

OIL

NGOs take Norway to European Court over Arctic oil exploration

Two NGOs and six young climate activists have decided to take Norway to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to demand the cancellation of oil permits in the Arctic, Greenpeace announced on Tuesday.

NGOs take Norway to European Court over Arctic oil exploration
Northern Norway. Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash.

It’s the latest turn in a legal tussle between environmental organisations Greenpeace and Young Friends of the Earth Norway on one side and the Norwegian state on the other.

The organisations are demanding the government cancel 10 oil exploration licenses in the Barents Sea awarded in 2016, arguing it was unconstitutional.

Referring to the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the organisations claim that the oil licenses violated article 112 of Norway’s constitution, guaranteeing everyone the right to a healthy environment.”

The six activists, alongside Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth Norway, hope that the European Court of Human Rights will hear their case and find that Norway’s oil expansion is in breach of human rights,” Greenpeace said in a statement.

In December, Norway’s Supreme Court rejected the claim brought by the organisations, their third successive legal defeat.

READ MORE: Norway sees oil in its future despite IEA’s warnings 

While most of the judges on the court agreed that article 112 could be invoked if the state failed to meet its climate and environmental obligations– they did not think it was applicable in this case.

The court also held that the granting of oil permits was not contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, in part because they did not represent “a real and immediate risk” to life and physical integrity.

“The young activists and the environmental organisations argue that this judgment was flawed, as it discounted the significance of their environmental constitutional rights and did not take into account an accurate assessment of the consequences of climate change for the coming generations,” Greenpeace said.

On Friday, the Norwegian government unveiled a white paper on the country’s energy future, which still includes oil exploration despite a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA recently warned that all future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Norwegian case is an example of a global trend in which climate activists are increasingly turning to courts to pursue their agenda.

SHOW COMMENTS