Earlier this month, the government released new rules that make it much harder for fossil fuel companies to hide the true impacts of their invariably destructive oil and gas projects. It's a strong step that demonstrates what we can achieve when we refuse to give up our fight against this toxic industry.
The new rules only apply to offshore oil and gas projects in the UK, but it’s obvious that the government should now reassess the climate impacts of all the fossil fuel projects the UK is involved in – at home and overseas.
Most urgently, the government must help to reverse Liz Truss’s destructive legacy by cancelling the near £1 billion in funding she promised to Mozambique LNG. This liquid natural gas project is owned by Total Energies and is predicted to exceed the annual emissions of the European Union every year. (1)
The project has been on hold due to major civil unrest in 2021, but multiple reports state that Total is ready to restart operations on this carbon bomb. (2)
Can you write to business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds and tell him not to fund Mozambique LNG?
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The government’s new rules mean that companies looking to open a new oilfield in the North Sea must now reveal the emissions from burning the oil and gas they plan to extract. Finally, oil and gas companies will be forced to come clean over the enormous harm they are causing to the climate.
This win didn’t happen in a vacuum, it was thanks to tenacious activists like you. Besides a major legal battle, activists nationwide ramped up a huge public campaign to make this happen. In December, Global Justice Now supporters signed a petition on oil and gas projects in the UK, which was submitted to the government when it was considering what to include in its new rules.
Each action we take can contribute to a win, as well as creating new opportunities in the global fight against fossil fuels. With the government’s new rules in place, we should now be asking why they shouldn’t apply to any project the UK is funding – in the UK or internationally.
Funding for Mozambique LNG would be an outrage. Besides the horrifying levels of emissions it promises, in the four years since the project was put on hold, it has also been hit with allegations of appalling human rights abuses – including mass killings, torture and sexual violence – by security forces reportedly paid by Total. (3) Of course, none of this stopped Trump’s government promising funding for it in early 2025.
Mozambican groups have spent the years fighting the project and those who have chosen to finance it. Anabela Lemos of Justiça Ambiental!/Friends of the Earth Mozambique says: "Financiers – out of morality and justice – must re-examine not only their support to this project but also their commitment to human rights."
Four years after Mozambique LNG was put on hold, and a year into this government’s term, it’s likely that ministers will want to make a decision on the UK’s funding for it very soon.
With the government formally admitting that the deadly impacts of fossil fuel projects go far beyond even the harms seen at the point of extraction, now is the time to stand in solidarity with activists in Mozambique and get our taxpayer funds out of this Truss and Trump touted Total disaster.
You can help by writing to Jonathan Reynolds today:
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Thank you,
Izzie McIntosh
Climate campaigner at Global Justice Now
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