Greenpeace sentenced to pay $100,000 for blocking oil platform
The activists, who got to board the platform on the high seas, disturbed their movement for several days in June 2019, forcing British Petroleum (BP) to change its route to reach the Vorlich oil field.
Ecologist Greenpeace announced on Friday that it had been fined by British justice £80,000 ($100,000) for blocking in 2019 a BP oil platform in the North Sea, run by the company Transocean, which sued them.
The activists, who got to board the platform on the high seas, disturbed their movement for several days in June 2019, forcing BP to change its route to reach the Vorlich oil field.
A court in Edinburgh, Scotland, ruled that the NGO violated its ban on blocking the platform, Greenpeace said in a statement, claiming it had been fined £ 80,000 and forced to reimburse Transocean's legal fees.
However, contrary to what the platform operator was asking for, Greenpeace UK CEO John Sauven was not sentenced to prison.
We are disappointed that Transocean has tried to punish us for trying to protect the planet, Sauven said.
But our campaign does not end here and we will continue to fight to prevent the oil industry from ruining the climate, he said.
BP's goal is to extract 30 million barrels of oil at Vorlich, an offshore site some 240 km east of the city of Aberdeen on the Scottish coast.
Production could be up to 20,000 barrels of crude per day and the cost of the project is £200m ($250m).