BP hit by tar sands protests in London, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge

Sat­ur­day April 10th
BP hit by tar sands protests in Lon­don, Brighton, Oxford and Cam­bridge

Oil com­pa­ny tar­get­ed by nation­wide protests in advance of cru­cial AGM vote

Pro­test­ers demand BP pulls out of “the most destruc­tive project on Earth” — the Cana­di­an tar sands

For pho­tos, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/no-tar-sands and http://www.no-tar-sands.org. Brief reports of the Lon­don and Oxford actions can be seen at http://www.demotix.com/news/297925/bp-party-pumps and http://www.demotix.com/news/298075/bp-tar-sands-protest-oxford.

Today, oil giant BP was struck by mul­ti­ple protests over its con­tro­ver­sial plans to extract oil from the Cana­di­an tar sands (1). Hun­dreds of cli­mate activists in Lon­don, Brighton, Oxford and Cam­bridge (2) tar­get­ed the com­pa­ny with simul­ta­ne­ous demon­stra­tions and street par­ties, includ­ing fore­court inva­sions which closed three BP petrol sta­tions in Lon­don and Brighton (3), (4).

Activists hailed the day as a major suc­cess, stat­ing that the protests would send a strong mes­sage to BP and its investors. Sheila Laugh­lin of the UK Tar Sands Net­work said:

“Today, we did exact­ly what we set out to do – we hit BP’s prof­its by shut­ting down their petrol sta­tions, and we hit their brand by inform­ing thou­sands of peo­ple about their destruc­tive tar sands plans. Near­ly every­one we spoke to was shocked and out­raged by the hor­rif­ic cli­mate, eco­log­i­cal and human impacts of tar sands extrac­tion. If BP want to com­plete­ly alien­ate the UK pub­lic, they’re going about it in exact­ly the right way.”

Mean­while, a share­hold­er res­o­lu­tion ques­tion­ing BP’s role in the tar sands, which is due to be dis­cussed and vot­ed on at their AGM lat­er this week (5), con­tin­ues to attract inter­est from share­hold­ers, with a num­ber of major invest­ment funds stat­ing their sup­port for the anti-tar sands res­o­lu­tion in the last few days (6).

ENDS

Notes to Edi­tors

1) Tar sands are a type of oily soil, which requires large amounts of ener­gy, water, and indus­tri­al pro­cess­ing to extract and trans­form into crude oil. Tar sands extrac­tion in Alber­ta, Cana­da is already the world’s largest indus­tri­al project, requir­ing the removal of vast areas of ancient for­est and con­sum­ing enough nat­ur­al gas per day to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes. The extrac­tion process emits 3 to 5 times as much car­bon diox­ide as con­ven­tion­al oil drilling, the lakes of tox­ic waste it pro­duces are so large they are vis­i­ble from space, and the pol­lu­tion from the project is harm­ing the health of the Indige­nous peo­ple who live in its shad­ow.
See http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2006_report/som-sum_eng.cfm and http://www.ienearth.org/cits.html

BP was the only major oil com­pa­ny not to be in the tar sands, until in 2007 it pur­chased a stake in the ‘Sun­rise Project’, an extrac­tion project that could pro­duce 200,000 bar­rels of tar sands oil per day. Ear­li­er this year it announced its poten­tial involve­ment in two oth­er, sim­i­lar devel­op­ments, although a final deci­sion as to whether or not to go ahead with them has yet to be made. Over the last six months, an unprece­dent­ed coali­tion of UK cli­mate activists, NGOs and Indige­nous Cana­di­an activists has come togeth­er to stop BP’s plans.

2) The April 10th day of action was sup­port­ed by the UK Tar Sands Net­work ( http://www.no-tar-sands.org), Ris­ing Tide UK ( http://risingtide.org.uk), the Camp for Cli­mate Action ( http://www.climatecamp.org.uk) and the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work ( http://www.ienearth.org)

3) A brief sum­ma­ry of each of the actions:

Lon­don: Around 150 peo­ple invad­ed BP’s Shepherd’s Bush petrol sta­tion at around 2pm today. They hung ban­ners off the roof, climbed on the pumps and held a ceilidh in the fore­court. The sta­tion remained closed for the rest of the after­noon. There was a heavy police pres­ence, but no arrests.

Oxford: About 25 peo­ple from the Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action group recon­struct­ed the Cana­di­an tar sands on Oxford’s cen­tral shop­ping parade, includ­ing a pipeline and “tox­ic” tail­ings pond com­plete with toy ducks. They used a cycle-pow­ered sound sys­tem to enter­tain and inform thou­sands of shop­pers with music and speech­es, while activists dressed as Cana­da and BP got friend­ly with each oth­er by the pipeline. Around 5,000 anti-BP leaflets were dis­trib­uted, and video mes­sages were col­lect­ed from the pub­lic to send to BP’s AGM.

Brighton: Activists suc­cess­ful­ly invad­ed and shut down two sep­a­rate BP petrol sta­tions. Pho­tos can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdmbrightonandhove

Cam­bridge: Local activists from the Cam­bridge Tar Sands Net­work led an uncon­ven­tion­al tour group through the city today. They took in the sights of RBS Branch­es, a Super­drug Loca­tion, and Uni­ver­si­ty Facil­i­ties fund­ed by BP, all of which have links to the Cana­di­an Tar Sands. The event drew the atten­tion of many mem­bers of the pub­lic, who took pho­tos, request­ed more infor­ma­tion, or even joined the tour. The event was hailed as a suc­cess­ful pub­lic expose of Cambridge’s dark tar-sand-stained under­bel­ly.

4) This day of action fell near the end of a full two weeks of action against BP and the tar sands, dubbed the “BP Fort­night of Shame”. Oth­er actions since April 1st have includ­ed:

• 22,000 “rebrand­ed” BP logos were deliv­ered to BP HQ – video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLzN3zld7o
• A BP petrol sta­tion was block­ad­ed in Ply­mouth, with pro­test­ers chain­ing them­selves to petrol pumps. The sta­tion was closed for an hour and a half, and there were two arrests: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Greens-protest-closes-petrol-station/article-1992261-detail/article.html
• A demon­stra­tion by Youth Against Cli­mate Change in St. Albans, tar­get­ing RBS, who are one of BP’s key fun­ders in the tar sands: http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/6646160.St_Albans_demo_targets__RBS/
• RBS cash machines were ren­dered tem­porar­i­ly out of order by Brighton Against Tar Sands (BATS): http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/448446.html
• A walk­ing tree from Alber­ta, Cana­da, turned up at BP HQ (and oth­er key Lon­don loca­tions) to com­plain about tar sands defor­esta­tion – video here: http://vimeo.com/10630598
• “Free mon­ey” stained with oil was giv­en out at a Natwest (owned by RBS) branch in Nor­wich: http://felixinnorwich.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/fossil-fools-day-in-norwich-tar-sand-protest-at-natwest/

5) BP’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing will take place at 11.30am on April 15th 2010 at the Excel Cen­tre, Lon­don. Cam­paign­ers will be speak­ing to share­hold­ers out­side the meet­ing, and chal­leng­ing BP inside the meet­ing. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/04/bp-investors-row-tar-sands

6) See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/bpdot/7568809/US-and-Australian-funds-join-BP-rebellion-on-oil-sands.html and http://nachhaltiger.de/index.php/2010/04/10/apg-may-vote-against-bp-shell-on-tar-sands/

UK Tar Sands Net­work
tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.no-tar-sands.org