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Oil under Brandenburg ‘could deliver billions’

Currently best known for not very much, the north German state of Brandenburg could soon be catapulted into an economic boom - a drilling firm reckons there are 92 million tonnes of oil there and plans to start drilling in four years.

Published: 1 August 2013 16:33 CEST

Oil under Brandenburg 'could deliver billions'

Photo: DPA

The economically depressed former east German state could benefit by nearly €7 billion, according to Central European Petroleum (CEP), which intends to start drilling in the Lausitz area, the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported on Thursday.

A German-Canadian consortium, CEP has found what it called deposits of “European significance” at two sites between Lübben and Lieberose in the Dahme-Spreewald region. It launched its plans to get the oil on Wednesday in Potsdam.

Thomas Schröter, CEO of the consortium said drilling could start in 2017, and could bring up at least 15 percent of what is there over the coming 30 to 50 years. This would be around 10 million tonnes of oil.

“It is of best quality, sweet and low in sulphur,” he said of the oil. “It is no Persian Gulf, but despite that it is an absolute hit.”

Currently around 2.5 million tonnes of oil are drilled in Germany each year, largely in Lower Saxony and off the Schleswig-Holstein coast, the paper said. And before reunification, drilling for oil was being carried out in Brandenburg. But this was dropped when East Germany ceased to exist.

CEP said the local authorities and the state would profit by around €6.75 billion over the whole period of the project – not only from taxes but also spending on things like road building and hotel stays for workers.

The Local/hc

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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.

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