Climate change campaigners targeted the UK headquarters of oil giant TotalEnergies with paint on 27 June. They were protesting the French firm’s alleged human rights violations in the construction of its oil pipeline in Uganda.
Supporters of Just Stop Oil sprayed black paint in the interior lobby of the company’s headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf district. Others daubed orange paint on its exterior, according to the protest group.
London’s Metropolitan police said officers had arrested 27 people:
for a combination of suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass.
EACOP
Dozens of students from Students Against EACOP also massed outside the building during the stunt to show support. The pressure group is opposed to the building of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP)
TotalEnergies is the largest shareholder in the climatologically disastrous East African venture. The project is set to carry crude oil to the Tanzanian coast through several Ugandan protected nature reserves.
Communities in the region claim the energy firm and other EACOP backers have caused serious harm to their rights to land and food in building the 930-mile pipeline.
Critics have called the project a “carbon bomb” which would release over 379 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.
An end to oil and gas exploration
Related action took place on the same day in mainland Europe. On 27 June, in France, a group of Ugandan citizens and aid groups, joined by French aid organisations, filed a lawsuit in a Paris court against TotalEnergies for damages over the alleged human rights violations.
Campaign group Oil Change International has calculated that TotalEnergies’ planned expansions would:
lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon-dioxide (CO2) pollution over their lifetimes, if the projects’ oil and gas reserves are fully extracted and burned.
Just Stop Oil wants the UK and other governments to end all new oil and gas exploration. The campaign has promised not to let up in its high-profile protests until it does so. The action on 27 June is just the latest in Just Stop Oil’s campaign of direct action, which shows absolutely no signs of stopping soon.
