Norwegian Government Appeals Court Ruling Invalidating Oil, Gas Permits

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Norway’s government on Wednesday said it would appeal a court’s decision to invalidate three permits that the energy ministry had granted for the development of new offshore oil and gas fields.

The Oslo District Court earlier this month ruled that the environmental impact had not been sufficiently assessed, after environmental campaign groups in November asked the court to block the development of three North Sea fields.

“We disagree with the District Court that a procedural error has been made in these three cases,” Energy Minister Terje Aasland said in a statement on Wednesday.

The court ruling concerns the management of new development projects, and not whether or not the government should have oil and gas production on the Norwegian continental shelf, Aasland added.

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“The government wants to further develop, not phase out, the petroleum sector,” he said.

The lawsuit filed by Greenpeace and its partner Nature and Youth concerns Equinor’s Breidablikk and Aker BP’s Yggdrasil and Tyrving fields, which hold combined reserves of some 875 million barrels of oil equivalent.

(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik)