A Greenpeace campaigner hijacked BP's keynote address to oil industry executives in London this morning because, they said, the under-fire company is "incapable of telling the truth".
As BP's chief of staff Steve Westwell, who was standing in for gaffe-prone boss Tony Hayward, took to the stage for the World National Oil Companies Congress at the five star Grange Hotel mother-of-three and Greenpeace campaigner Emma Gibson stepped in to speak to the industry's premier gathering.
She said: "Assembled guests - because BP is incapable of telling you the truth, I'm going to tell you what you need to know.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we need to speed up progress and make a push to end the oil age.
"That means stopping the push for dangerous projects to pump out hard-to-reach oil - like deepwater drilling and the tar sands of Canada. Deepwater drilling risks disasters like the Gulf spill while tar sands means clear-cutting forests and literally cooking the ground below to produce oil. Politicians must make moves to spark an electric car revolution so our cars can run on clean renewable energy."
Emma was then removed by security guards.
Another Greenpeace campaigner, Katie Swan, also took to the stage brandishing a banner reading ‘GO BEYOND PETROLEUM'
Katie is from the American state of Maine but studied for four years in New Orleans on the Gulf Coast.
Aside from deep sea wells, BP wants to invest billions to extract oil-soaked ‘tar sands' deposits which are found beneath the boreal forests of Canada. The process accelerates global climate change due to the massive amounts of energy needed to bring the tar sands to the surface for refining. Campaigners say that the environmental impact of tar sands extraction could be just as damaging as the current spill.
A company presentation delivered by Tony Hayward in March this year shows that over the course of 2010, BP planned to invest US$19bn on its oil and gas business compared with less than $1bn on all alternative technologies combined - which includes spending on controversial biofuels, as well as wind, solar and all other clean technologies put together.
Industrialised countries currently pour around $100 billion every year into oil, gas and coal companies. If this money was invested in clean technologies it would make a huge difference to how quickly we'd wean ourselves off oil. Governments at the forthcoming G20 will be discussing how and when they phase out these dirty subsidies.
Greenpeace is demanding that oil companies:
ENDS
Contact Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255
Ben Stewart Head of Media on 07801 212967
BP presentation can be found at: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/I/IC_bp_strategy_presentation_march_2010_slides.pdf p.67
The full text of the speech that Greenpeace attempted to deliver is:
"Assembled guests - because BP is incapable of telling you the truth, I'm going to tell you what you need to know.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we need to speed up progress and make a push to end the oil age.
"That means stopping the push for dangerous projects to pump out hard-to-reach oil - like deepwater drilling and the tar sands of Canada. Deepwater drilling risks disasters like the Gulf spill while tar sands means clear-cutting forests and literally cooking the ground below to produce oil. Politicians must make moves to spark an electric car revolution so our cars can run on clean renewable energy.
"If BP had heeded our advice and invested billions into safe, clean renewable energy - instead of deepwater drilling - then the Gulf of Mexico wouldn't be facing a catastrophe, and BP's shareholders wouldn't be loaded with a $40billion clean-up bill.
"If we end the oil age early we'll cause less pollution, we'll generate the power for our cars here at home instead of relying on dangerous regimes to fill our tanks, and we'll make our air cleaner and pump out less climate changing emissions. We won't be reliant on a substance that's going to get a lot more expensive as it gets rarer and rarer so we'll be able to keep our cars and keep them affordable without all the terrible downsides of oil.
"You people gathered here wield great power. Now it's time to use it properly - to end the oil age and to invest in cutting-edge clean technologies."
As BP's chief of staff Steve Westwell, who was standing in for gaffe-prone boss Tony Hayward, took to the stage for the World National Oil Companies Congress at the five star Grange Hotel mother-of-three and Greenpeace campaigner Emma Gibson stepped in to speak to the industry's premier gathering.
She said: "Assembled guests - because BP is incapable of telling you the truth, I'm going to tell you what you need to know.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we need to speed up progress and make a push to end the oil age.
"That means stopping the push for dangerous projects to pump out hard-to-reach oil - like deepwater drilling and the tar sands of Canada. Deepwater drilling risks disasters like the Gulf spill while tar sands means clear-cutting forests and literally cooking the ground below to produce oil. Politicians must make moves to spark an electric car revolution so our cars can run on clean renewable energy."
Emma was then removed by security guards.
Another Greenpeace campaigner, Katie Swan, also took to the stage brandishing a banner reading ‘GO BEYOND PETROLEUM'
Katie is from the American state of Maine but studied for four years in New Orleans on the Gulf Coast.
Aside from deep sea wells, BP wants to invest billions to extract oil-soaked ‘tar sands' deposits which are found beneath the boreal forests of Canada. The process accelerates global climate change due to the massive amounts of energy needed to bring the tar sands to the surface for refining. Campaigners say that the environmental impact of tar sands extraction could be just as damaging as the current spill.
A company presentation delivered by Tony Hayward in March this year shows that over the course of 2010, BP planned to invest US$19bn on its oil and gas business compared with less than $1bn on all alternative technologies combined - which includes spending on controversial biofuels, as well as wind, solar and all other clean technologies put together.
Industrialised countries currently pour around $100 billion every year into oil, gas and coal companies. If this money was invested in clean technologies it would make a huge difference to how quickly we'd wean ourselves off oil. Governments at the forthcoming G20 will be discussing how and when they phase out these dirty subsidies.
Greenpeace is demanding that oil companies:
- Stop chasing the last drops of oil from the ends of the Earth - stop unconventional oil: deepwater drilling, arctic drilling and tar sands
- End the oil subsidy - stop wasting our taxes to fund oil disasters and climate change
- Liberate our economy from the need for oil - cut demand
- Race for the future - speed up progress and bring on smart design, electric vehicles and hi-tech clean energy
- Invest in tomorrow - we all own the oil majors through our pension funds, it's time to shift what we finance. Instead of putting money into risky oil we want our financial future and the planet's future secured with clean energy.
ENDS
Contact Greenpeace press office on 020 7865 8255
Ben Stewart Head of Media on 07801 212967
BP presentation can be found at: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/I/IC_bp_strategy_presentation_march_2010_slides.pdf p.67
The full text of the speech that Greenpeace attempted to deliver is:
"Assembled guests - because BP is incapable of telling you the truth, I'm going to tell you what you need to know.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we need to speed up progress and make a push to end the oil age.
"That means stopping the push for dangerous projects to pump out hard-to-reach oil - like deepwater drilling and the tar sands of Canada. Deepwater drilling risks disasters like the Gulf spill while tar sands means clear-cutting forests and literally cooking the ground below to produce oil. Politicians must make moves to spark an electric car revolution so our cars can run on clean renewable energy.
"If BP had heeded our advice and invested billions into safe, clean renewable energy - instead of deepwater drilling - then the Gulf of Mexico wouldn't be facing a catastrophe, and BP's shareholders wouldn't be loaded with a $40billion clean-up bill.
"If we end the oil age early we'll cause less pollution, we'll generate the power for our cars here at home instead of relying on dangerous regimes to fill our tanks, and we'll make our air cleaner and pump out less climate changing emissions. We won't be reliant on a substance that's going to get a lot more expensive as it gets rarer and rarer so we'll be able to keep our cars and keep them affordable without all the terrible downsides of oil.
"You people gathered here wield great power. Now it's time to use it properly - to end the oil age and to invest in cutting-edge clean technologies."
