FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22 December 2020
Washington, DC — In a decision that disappointed climate advocates while offering little comfort to oil producers or investors, the Norwegian Supreme Court today upheld the government’s 2011 and 2013 grants of exploration licenses in the Arctic but put a big question mark on whether any oil discovered could actually be produced.
Today’s decision culminates four years of litigation in a landmark case brought by Greenpeace Nordic, Nature and Youth, and other organizations arguing that the grant of exploration licenses in the Barents Sea violated the right to a healthy environment enshrined in the Norwegian constitution.
In a decision narrow in its legal holdings but broad in its risks for the industry, the Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Norwegian constitution protects citizens from environmental harms, including the climate harms created by burning exported oil, but declined to enforce that right against an oil exploration licensing scheme expressly authorized by Parliament.
While the Court considered future emissions from exported oil too uncertain to bar the granting of the petroleum exploration licenses at issue in the case, it held that these emissions would have “great weight” in any future decision regarding the production of any oil discovered. The court observed that even significant investments in exploration did not entitle companies to extract any fossil fuels that might be found, stating that the authorities will have the “right and duty” to deny production licenses if granting them would violate the constitutional right to a healthy environment.
“The Court’s decision shifts the legal burden back to the government to seriously address the climate impacts of oil exports in any future production licensing,” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett. “And by delaying those decisions even as the climate crisis accelerates, the Court has dramatically increased the risk that costly investments in oil exploration will add more unexploitable and worthless reserves to companies’ mounting piles of stranded assets.”
Today’s judgment will also increase pressure for Norway’s leadership to listen to their citizens, heed the overwhelming science, and join Denmark and others in halting new oil and gas production.
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Background Information
People v. Arctic Oil follows a 2016 suit filed by Nature and Youth (Young Friends of the Earth Norway) and Greenpeace Nordic against Norway’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum on the ground that the Ministry’s decision to open new areas of Norway’s Barents Sea to oil and gas exploration violates the right to a healthy environment enshrined in Article 112 of Norway’s Constitution. The groups were later joined by the Grandparents’ Climate Campaign and Friends of the Earth Norway as co-plaintiffs. The case was originally heard in Oslo District Court in 2017 and in Borgarting Court of Appeals in 2019.
While the Borgarting Court of Appeals found that the state did not violate Article 112 of the Norwegian constitution, the court also held that Article 112 entitles Norwegian citizens to protection from environmental harms caused by climate change, including harms caused by the combustion of fossil fuels exported from Norway. Despite this recognition, the Court of Appeals found that Norway’s human rights obligations do not extend to the global consequences of climate change, that there was no “real and immediate risk” to human life within Norway, and that there was no ‘direct and immediate link’ between the plaintiffs’ harms and the Minister’s decision to allow expanded oil production in the Norwegian Arctic.
In 2017, a coalition of organizations and individuals led by CIEL filed an amicus curiae brief in the case arguing that Article 112 of the Norwegian Constitution must be informed by Norway’s international human rights obligations, including its obligations to protect the environment in a manner that guarantees future generations can enjoy their rights.