Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced plans to block major UK oil refineries in April as part of a further wave of action targeting the fossil fuel industry.
The exact refinery locations are yet to be made public, though the group says it intends to “stop the harm at the source” by creating disruption that would force the UK government to commit to XR’s immediate demand to “stop the fossil fuel economy.”
XR said it intends to target the fossil fuel industry to cause “maximum nonviolent disruption,” drawing on other similar movements to assist disruption. The group Just Stop Oil will also be blocking refineries across the UK, with other groups to be confirmed.
Following the beginning of the refinery blockades, XR said it plans to “flood London” with people from the 9th April.
Its announcement says the protests will be “be easy to find, easy to join, disruptive and impossible to ignore”, and will create more roadblocks than previous actions.
A spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said, “We are calling on protest groups, NGOs and individuals to join us and take a stand to stop fossil fuels once and for all. Now is the time, this is the moment. Don’t sit this one out!”
Extinction Rebellion UK also sent a letter to the UK Government today, stating its plans for the coming month.
The letter says: “Every day the UK government fails to act makes our common future more bleak, our prospects more terrifying. And you know this. You have understood implicitly the path our planet is on since Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief Scientific Adviser presented the facts to you on 28 January 2020.”
It concludes: “So, either you do what the entire scientific community and the International Energy Agency is telling us we need to do to save ourselves and stop all fossil fuel investments immediately, or in April we are going to do what you refuse to do. We’re going to stop the UK oil flow and bring the country with us.”
Grangemouth, operated by PetroIneos, is Scotland’s only major crude oil refinery complex, though it is unclear if this site will be a target for protests.
A Police Scotland spokesperson told Energy Voice: “Police Scotland monitors all aspects of proposed protest activity and any events will be policed appropriately. Police Scotland is a rights-based organisation that puts our values of integrity, fairness, respect and a commitment to upholding human rights at the heart of everything we do.
“This means that we will protect the rights of people who wish to peacefully protest or counter-protest, balanced against the rights of the wider community.”
Clare Farrell, Extinction Rebellion co-founder said: “Oil refineries are symbolic of continued extraction and profit for a small group of very wealthy companies at the expense of everyone else. We burn them, pollute our cities, poison ourselves and our children whilst committing to climate breakdown. It’s no wonder the entire environmental movement is focussing on ending fossil fuels and the death they cause. The writing is on the wall, and we are out of time.”
Ms Farrell also pointed to the “ongoing cost of living crisis” as fossil fuel companies make “record breakingly massive profits,” and said the UK has failed to make progress on home insulation and energy efficiency.
“Boris Johnson arguing for a ‘climate change pass’ involving new fossil fuel development sidelines the decades of failure to prevent millions of deaths from pollution and climate breakdown by building in decades more failure and more millions of deaths. We need to decarbonise and to do so as fast as possible.”
