30 shut down Manchester petrol station

10.02.2007

Yes­ter­day, 30 cli­mate activists shut down an ESSO petrol sta­tion on Upper Brook Street in Man­ches­ter for 2 hours. The action aimed to high­light the link between the oil indus­try and glob­al warm­ing.

ESSO is a direct con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change by burn­ing fos­sil fuels. It still active­ly looks for more oil. At the same time, ESSO is the last oil com­pa­ny to deny the link between burn­ing fos­sil fuels and cli­mate change. It has con­sis­tent­ly sab­o­taged inter­na­tion­al agree­ments on the issue. Although it announced a £20bn annu­al prof­it last week (the largest one in US cor­po­rate his­to­ry), ESSO does not spend a pen­ny on renew­able ener­gy.


30 peo­ple block­ad­ed the two entrances to the petrol sta­tion, using bits of fenc­ing and traf­fic cones. As a sym­bol against car cul­ture, three peo­ple locked them­selves with D‑locks to bicy­cles. Two oth­ers were locked to con­crete based signs. Two large ban­ners were dis­played read­ing “no.1 sup­pli­er, no.1 denier, no.1 prof­i­teer” and “closed for deny­ing cli­mate change”.
Police attend­ed the scene, but were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive. Passers-by and car dri­vers gave an over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive response, many honk­ing in sup­port.

Media atten­tion was high. Cam­era teams from both Chan­nel M and ITV Grana­da inter­viewed activists. A pho­to jour­nal­ist from Man­ches­ter Evening News was present. The BBC asked for footage to be sent in.

After two hours, hun­dreds of leaflets had been giv­en out and the block­aders vol­un­tar­i­ly re-opened the sta­tion. No arrests were made.

manchester@climatecamp.org.uk