Oslo (AFP) – Norway’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that three oil licences granted by the government in the North Sea were invalid since their emissions impact had not adequately been accounted for. The court agreed with climate campaigners, who challenged the validity of the licences, arguing that the environmental impact assessments had not considered the greenhouse gases let out by burning the oil after it had been extracted.
“This is a historic victory for the climate and for Norwegian democracy,” Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, head of the Scandinavian country’s wing of Greenpeace, told AFP shortly after the ruling was announced. “Big polluters are now forced to admit exactly how much they will contribute to the climate crisis that we are in the middle of,” she added.
Energy Minister Terje Aasland said in a statement to AFP that the “ruling is important because it clarifies the requirements for the decision-making process in cases like these,” adding that his ministry will “of course, follow these requirements”. Eleven judges took part in handing down the highly anticipated ruling instead of the usual five — a format reserved for important cases. The campaigners had already won victories in two lower-court rulings.
The high court ruled that the plans for extraction and expansion were “invalid due to procedural errors”. It noted in a statement that while emissions assessments were carried out, they only covered so-called production emissions and not the subsequent “combustion emissions”. According to the court, “the combustion emissions resulting from petroleum production must be subject to an impact assessment” before a plan is approved.
Greenpeace’s Tjeldflaat Helle said that “this will give Norwegian public and Norwegian decision makers a much clearer, better picture of how much the Norwegian oil and gas industry is actually contributing to the climate crisis”.
Norway has overtaken Russia as the continent’s main supplier as the conflict in Ukraine led to a sharp decline in Russian gas and oil deliveries to Europe. The ruling was 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.
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. In January 2024, a district court ruled in their favour, prompting Norway’s Ministry of Energy to lodge an appeal. The ruling was then upheld by an appeals court in November 2025. Operations were allowed to continue at the three contested North Sea fields while the energy ministry appealed the rulings. Breidablikk and Tyrving are currently operational, while Yggdrasil — whose potential reserves were recently revised upward — was due to start producing in 2027.
The Supreme Court noted that the oil companies were not parties in the case and said the fact the approvals had been declared invalid did not automatically mean the licences ceased to apply. “The ministry must, however, reassess the case on the basis of proper procedure,” the court said. In his statement, Aasland also stressed that the court had “made it very clear that this does not mean that activities at the three fields must stop,” but that the decisions needed to be reassessed. “We need to study the ruling more closely before we can say more about how we will proceed,” Aasland added.
Climate campaigners around the world have started seeing successes by employing legal routes to challenge projects. Australia’s highest court in October blocked the expansion of a coal mine in New South Wales, saying that planning bodies had not properly looked at the local impacts of planet-heating emissions from the coal. However, Australia’s state of New South Wales has introduced laws that would allow the expansion of a massive coal mine, despite the court’s ruling.
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. Sarah Finch, who led the UK campaign, told AFP she was “absolutely delighted” to hear about the Norwegian ruling. “I’m so proud that our fight against one oil field in England has set off a wave of climate- and future-friendly judgments around the world,” she said.
© 2024 AFP
