Production underway from one of the oil fields in the climate lawsuit

On the same day that the trial about the climate lawsuit was to start, oil production has been started from the Tyrving field in the Alvheim area in the North Sea, reports VG.

The start-up is about half a year earlier than planned.

– It is shameless to speed up the start-up to the middle of the appeal process, says Greenpeace leader Frode Pleym to the newspaper.

– The state rises above the law, undermines the rule of law and people’s sense of justice, he adds.

The trial itself about the climate lawsuit was originally supposed to start today, but was postponed until tomorrow. Before the weekend, the state tried to stop parts of the lawsuit, and the state believes that new impact assessments of two oil fields mean that large parts of the climate lawsuit must be shelved. They justified it by the fact that new investigations have been carried out in two of the fields of their previous court round.

The core of the lawsuit against the state is that the climate organizations believe that a valid impact assessment was not carried out before the three oil fields were approved.

When the previous judgment was handed down in the Oslo District Court, it was decided to halt production and development of the three fields until further notice. But this ban was lifted by the Court of Appeal in May.

VG has contacted the Ministry of Energy, which has not yet responded to the inquiry.