Environmental activists on Tuesday launched a new lawsuit against Shell in the Netherlands, demanding that the supermajor stop bringing new oil and gas fields on stream to avoid additional emissions.
Friends of the Earth – the Netherlands, or Milieudefensie, delivered the summons to Shell on Tuesday, in the second such case against the oil and gas major in the country.
In 2024, a Dutch court of appeal handed a victory to Shell in the first landmark climate case, overturning a lower court ruling that had obliged the supermajor to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.
The Court of Appeal of The Hague overturned the 2021 ruling of the District Court of The Hague, in the case brought against Shell by the environmentalist organization Milieudefensie, other NGOs, and a group of private individuals.
Milieudefensie last year took the case to the Dutch Supreme Court in an effort to enforce the original ruling, despite Shell stating back in 2021 that even if it reduced its oil and gas production to comply with the original court ruling, this would have zero impact on global oil and gas demand, supply, and, consequently, emissions.
Since the first case was launched, Shell has moved its headquarters out of the Netherlands, but has retained a secondary listing in Amsterdam.
In the new lawsuit initiated on Tuesday, Milieudefensie said it “is demanding that Shell must stop bringing new oil and gas fields into production.”
“The science is perfectly clear: there is no more room for developing new oil and gas fields,” the climate campaigners said.
The new case argues that the Court of Appeal’s verdict, while overturning the original ruling, said that “investments in new oil and gas fields might be at odds with the Paris Climate Agreement.”
Shell’s chief executive Wael Sawan has said that reducing global oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible” in view of the recent energy crises and the still rising demand for fossil fuels.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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