Message From the Editor

This week, we published a piece on the future of cleaning up the North Sea and the potential bill — with one estimate totaling a cost of over 30 billion Euros ($32 billion).

Currently, this corner of the Atlantic Ocean between the British Isles and mainland Europe is home to hundreds of drilling rigs, thousands of oil and gas wells, and tens of thousands of kilometers of pipelines. But many of those structures are no longer being used and cleanup has not happened on the scale it should — threatening to turn the North Sea into a vast graveyard of decaying fossil fuel infrastructure.

Global Investigations Editor Matthew Green joined Dutch investigative journalism platform Follow the Money in cooperation with Norwegian broadcaster NRK and Belgian newspaper De Tijd to bring DeSmog readers this first installment in a multi-year international reporting project on the battle for the future of the North Sea.

Jumping over to New Jersey, the city of Hoboken recently added racketeering charges to its climate lawsuit against major petroleum producers and their national trade group the American Petroleum Institute.

Hoboken’s state case, initially filed in September 2020, contends that Big Oil deliberately misled the public in order to stave off climate action and protect profits. By adding a racketeering claim, the city is alleging that the defendants not only engaged in deceptive acts, but did so in a planned and coordinated way. It joins Puerto Rico’s federal racketeering charges against the industry, which were first used to successfully prosecute mobsters and later the tobacco industry.

“These racketeering cases should be viewed as a new legal front against the oil and gas industry,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.

DeSmog has also been shortlisted for the Drum Online Media Awards in the Specialist News Site category. This award highlights “the best in journalism and online publishing” and we are honored to be on the list.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: [email protected]. Want to know what our UK team is up to? Sign up for our UK newsletter.

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

P.S. Investigative journalism like this is made possible by readers like you. Can you donate $10 or $20 right now to support more of this essential work?

Image credit: Greenpeace

Cleaning Up After the North Sea Oil Industry Will Cost Billions

— By Birte Schohaus, Margaux Tjoeng, Dimitri Tokmetzis, Leon De Korte and Matthew Green (9 min. read) —

Skimming across the waves in inflatable dinghies, activists closed in on their target: An abandoned steel hulk looming 40 storeys above the surface of the North Sea. Encircling the platform, tugboats fired plumes of seawater in a spectacular but futile attempt to stop the protesters scaling its sheer sides. 

It was the spring of 1995, and a Greenpeace campaign to prevent Royal Dutch Shell disposing of the giant floating oil tank — known as Brent Spar — by towing it away and sinking it was fast developing into a pivotal moment in environmental activism. Shell had never faced anything like it. The activists occupied the facility for nearly a month; British opposition politicians rallied to their cause; and customers boycotted Shell petrol stations in the Netherlands and Germany. In Hamburg, a Shell service station was firebombed. 

Hoboken Lodges First State-Level Racketeering Charge in Big Oil Climate Lawsuit

— By Dana Drugmand (7 min. read) —

In a first at the state level, the City of Hoboken, New Jersey recently added racketeering charges to its climate lawsuit against major petroleum producers and their national trade group the American Petroleum Institute (API). Hoboken is making this claim against fossil fuel companies under the state-level equivalent of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a federal law used successfully to prosecute organized crime groups such as the Mafia starting in the 1970s and later the tobacco industry. Puerto Rico lodged federal racketeering charges against the industry in a class action climate case last November.

Revealed 1 in 3 GB News Hosts Spread Climate Denial On Air in 2022

— By Adam Barnett (10 min. read) —

A majority of GB News hosts attacked climate action on the channel in 2022, while one in three spread climate science denial, a DeSmog analysis can reveal. 

Opponents of green policies have seized on the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to denounce the UK’s net zero target and push for new, environmentally-damaging fossil fuel extraction. 

Broadcaster GB News has faced criticism for spreading anti-green messages to millions of viewers since its launch in June 2021. GB News CEO Angelos Frangopoulos has previously defended the platform by claiming that it presents “multiple sides of the climate debate”.

Major Tory Donor's Oil and Gas Firm Granted Government Licenses to Explore CO2 Storage in North Sea

— By Phoebe Cooke (5 min. read) —

An oil and gas company run by a leading Conservative Party donor has been awarded licenses to explore carbon dioxide storage under the North Sea, sparking accusations that the government is putting the interests of “its friends in the oil and gas business” ahead of the public interest.

On Thursday (18 May), EnQuest announced plans to develop a “low-cost carbon megastore” after winning four out of 20 available carbon capture and storage (CCS) licences, the first of their kind in Europe. The firm already holds dozens of licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration.

Cabinet Ministers Join Outspoken Climate Science Deniers at National Conservatism Conference

— By Joey Grostern and Adam Barnett (8 min. read) —

The National Conservatism (NatCon) conference kicks off today in Westminster, London, featuring a roster of high-profile speakers drawn from the upper reaches of the government and the conservative right. 

A DeSmog analysis has found climate denial and a hostility to net zero to be a common feature among many of the individuals speaking at the three-day summit.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Mike Sommers

Mike Sommers has been the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest oil and gas lobby group in the U.S., since May 2018. Before API, Sommers was president and CEO of the American Investment Council (AIC) and in 2005, Sommers worked as a special assistant to U.S. President George W. Bush at the National Economic Council where he advised Bush on agriculture and trade policy. According to his profile at AIC, “Sommers has been at the center of every major policy dispute in the last decade and successfully negotiated bipartisan compromises on landmark legislation, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008, the resolution of the fiscal cliff in 2013, the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015 and trade promotion authority in 2015.”

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.