By Nerijus Adomaitis
OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s government asked an appeals court on Wednesday to lift injunctions against developing three oil and gas fields, part of a wider effort by Oslo to overturn an earlier verdict invalidating the permits on environmental grounds.
A lower court ruled in January that Norway’s energy ministry failed to fully assess the climate impact from the future use of the fields’ oil and gas, so-called scope three emissions, in a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and its partner Nature and Youth.
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At that time, the court also ordered temporary injunctions against the development of the three fields known as Yggdrasil, Tyrving and Breidablikk.
But the appeals court in March put the injunctions on hold, giving the government and field operators Aker BP and Equinor leeway to continue working on the fields.
“The court should not issue any injunctions, because the requirement is that it has to be urgent, and you also have to weigh up the balance of the competing interests. And in the state’s view, these requirements are not met,” Goeran Oesterman Thengs, a lawyer representing the state, told Reuters.
“In the state’s view, the negative impacts, both societal and for the licence holders, will clearly outweigh the possible benefit claimed by the environmental organizations,” he added.
Thengs has warned in a court filing of “potentially large direct financial losses” if the injunctions were upheld.
Combined undertaken and planned investments in the three fields amount to 140 million Norwegian crowns ($13 million).
Lawyers for the environmental organizations told Reuters they were going to argue at a hearing on Thursday that the injunctions were needed to stop “irreparable harm” because new fields will increase climate-warming CO2 emissions.
The Norwegian government says that while it seeks to pump hydrocarbons for decades to come it is complying with the Paris climate accords seeking to limit global warming and has set a net-zero emission target for 2050.
Equinor’s Breidablikk field started production in October 2023, while Aker BP’s Tyrving began production this week, drawing criticism from the environmentalists.
“This only proves why there is a need to have injunctions on the fields’ development,” Frode Pleym, head of Greenpeace Norway, told Reuters.
Yggdrasil, which is also operated by Aker BP, is set to start production in 2027.
($1 = 10.6207 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Terje Solsvik, Christian Schmollinger and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
