Oslo (AFP) – Norway’s Supreme Court will on Friday deliver a highly awaited ruling on oil licences granted by the government but challenged by climate campaigners, in a case that could set a precedent for the country’s oil production. The ruling will be closely watched beyond the borders of the Scandinavian country by the many legal experts and NGOs who have challenged production licences granted to oil companies on climate grounds.
Climate campaigners, who challenged the Norwegian licences by arguing they had been granted without sufficient environmental impact studies, have won victories in two lower court rulings. However, the judges allowed operations to continue at the three contested North Sea fields while the Energy Ministry appealed the rulings. A third win for the campaigners “would mean that the Supreme Court finds the three oil fields to be illegal and invalid,” Klimentina Radkova, a campaigner in charge of the case at Greenpeace, told AFP.
Young Friends of the Earth Norway and the Norwegian branch of Greenpeace filed the case in 2023 against the permits for the Tyrving, Breidablikk, and Yggdrasil fields, saying they were approved before environmental impact studies had been carried out. In January 2024, a district court ruled in their favour, prompting Norway’s Ministry of Energy to lodge an appeal, and the ruling was then upheld by a court of appeal in November 2025. The Energy Ministry argued there were no grounds to halt the projects. Breidablikk and Tyrving are currently operational, while Yggdrasil – whose potential reserves were recently revised upward – is due to start producing in 2027.
“We’re already quite happy with what we’ve achieved this far because this lawsuit has led to or contributed to legal wins all around the world,” Radkova said. Australia’s highest court in October blocked the expansion of a coal mine in New South Wales, stating that planning bodies had not properly looked at the local impacts of planet-heating emissions from the coal. In France, a court in June ordered TotalEnergies to take into account emissions linked to all its products in its corporate vigilance plan. The United Kingdom’s top court in 2024 ruled in favour of opponents to an oil drilling project, finding that its environmental impact had not been sufficiently taken into account.
In Norway, the energy ministry maintains that it has carried out adequate environmental assessments for the North Sea licences. The conflict in Ukraine has led to a sharp decline in Russian gas and oil deliveries to Europe, with Norway overtaking Russia as the continent’s main supplier.
In practical terms, if the Supreme Court sides with the activists, the environmental assessment procedure will have to be amended to include quantifiable climate impacts for future projects, with this information being made public, Radkova explained. “Then the real scandal will be if you are able to quantify that thousands of people will die as a result of one field; is that something that politicians want to put their name to and approve?” Radkova said, describing it as a big win in itself.
Asked for a comment by AFP, Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Aasland stressed that his country is contributing to the fight against climate change in line with its international commitments. Whatever the outcome, he said he was convinced that the case has “been thoroughly and carefully examined” by the court.
Jasper Teulings, a legal specialist at the Climate Litigation Network, told AFP that the case would likely have international repercussions. “We could be looking at an emerging norm that makes it really difficult for governments to issue such licences,” Teulings said. “Obviously, all of this has severe implications for the fossil fuel sector’s expansion plans,” he added.
© 2024 AFP
