‘THEY PROFIT, WE PAY’: Rosebank production ship pursued and painted by Rainbow Warrior
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  • Press Release

‘THEY PROFIT, WE PAY’: Rosebank production ship pursued and painted by Rainbow Warrior

Graham Thompson
Graham Thompson

Pictures, video footage, drone and phone footage of the protest are all available here.

As the Rosebank oil field was being discussed in Parliament yesterday in an Opposition Day debate[1], Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior III caught up with the PetroJarl Rosebank, the huge oil industry ship heading to the field near the Shetland Islands, as it left Walvis Bay in Namibia after refuelling. Activists from the Warrior in RHIBs (rigid hulled inflatable boats) and kayaks protested the Rosebank’s plans for the second time in five days. 

Four activists from the Warrior managed to reach the PetroJarl Rosebank in a RHIB and paint ‘THEY PROFIT, WE PAY’ down the side of the hull.

Six more activists in kayaks and RHIBs surrounded the Rosebank with banners protesting their plans, reading ‘OIL WAR PROFITEERS’, ‘STOP ROSEBANK’ and ‘SHELL + EQUINOR PROFIT, WE PAY‘, while the Warrior displayed a giant banner hung between its masts reading ‘STOP ROSEBANK’.

Shell, Equinor and Ithaca, the three oil companies behind the project, have seen their combined market value soar by billions of pounds since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.[2] 

Angharad Hopkinson, a campaigner from Greenpeace UK currently aboard the Warrior, said:

“These oil companies think they can carry on ignoring the reality of climate change and profiteering from disastrous oil wars as their industry always has. But their time dominating global politics is coming to an end. We have the technologies needed for real energy security and independence. Renewables are already providing far more of our electricity than fossil fuels and as the economy electrifies the role and influence of companies like Shell and Equinor will continue to shrink. 

“But we’re still paying over the odds for our energy because we still let fossil fuels set our prices. To protect bill payers, as well as the climate, we need to quit our oil and gas addiction as quickly as possible. The government must stick to their guns on Rosebank and refuse to allow these climate vandals to bounce them into making a big, dirty and very expensive mistake.”

The PetroJarl Rosebank is a 95,000-tonne ‘floating production, storage and offloading’ (FPSO) vessel operated by Adura, a Shell and Equinor joint venture based in Aberdeen. The ship was renamed the ‘PetroJarl Rosebank’ and reflagged to the UK in January while being refitted in Dubai, having previously been the ‘PetroJarl Knarr’ and flagged to the Bahamas. It is being towed to UK waters by large ocean-going tugs. All this activity has taken place despite the Rosebank oilfield not having final permission to operate from the UK government.

The oil and gas resources in the North Sea have been thoroughly explored and around 90% of them have already been extracted and used[3]. What remains is difficult and expensive to extract. But the UK can replace dwindling North Sea fossil fuel supplies with renewable energy more quickly and cheaply than with new drilling licenses. By 2030 the renewable sources commissioned in the last auction round alone should be supplying nearly six times more energy than the extra domestic gas production in 2030 if new licences are issued for North Sea drilling.[4]   

Equinor had to submit a revised Environmental Impact Assessment for Rosebank including carbon emissions from burning the field’s oil (scope 3 emissions) after the permission given by the last government was judged unlawful in a 2025 court case brought by Greenpeace and Uplift. The estimated scope 3 emissions of the field are 249 million tonnes of CO2e – more than the combined annual emissions of Ireland, Belgium and Greece.

Ed Miliband, Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero, described the last government’s decision to give permission to drill in the Rosebank field as ‘colossal waste of taxpayer money and climate vandalism’[5]. This chimes with the views of the UK public where, according to polling from YouGov, 54% of UK voters think that increasing renewables is the best way to ensure energy security, while only 25% think it is drilling for new oil and gas.[6]

Pictures, video footage, drone and phone footage of the protest are all available here.

Spokespeople are available for interview.

ENDS

Contact

Please call 07801 212 960 for queries or interviews.

Greenpeace UK Press Office – press.uk@greenpeace.org or 020 7865 8255

Pictures, video footage, drone and phone footage of the protest are all available here.

Notes

  1. MPs voted against a Conservative opposition day motion to end the UK Government’s ban on new oil and gas licences for the North Sea, end the windfall tax on energy giants and approve the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields by 297 to 108 votes. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/mps-vote-against-tory-motion-on-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-projects-6220509 
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/15/oil-company-shares-soar-to-all-time-highs-as-middle-east-war-turbocharges-price-per-barrel https://www.ft.com/content/e37bed88-adfa-472d-a86b-2167dc7ca705 
  3. https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/around-90-of-uk-north-sea-oil-and-gas-already-drained-dry-analysis 
  4. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-clean-energy-will-cut-uk-gas-imports-by-more-than-north-sea-drilling/ 
  5. https://x.com/Ed_Miliband/status/1639587552553213953?s=20 
  6. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kHctDrTv4-331OsTlWGadZO50W3YIlUf4kbUQhhfPCE/edit?slide=id.g3cc67ac0edb_0_171#slide=id.g3cc67ac0edb_0_171