Adhack | Clean Gas Is A Dirty Lie

The massive PR and lobby misinformation campaign currently being waged by the fossil gas industry is diverting hundreds of billions of euros of public money away from the health and climate emergencies, and instead lining the pockets of their billionaire shareholders and CEOs. The result threatens to lock Europe into another generation fossil fuel addiction and import infrastructure that is directly reliant upon devastating extraction practices across the world – such as “fracking” that is itself illegal throughout Europe – that leak huge quantities of climate wrecking methane directly into the atmosphere. All of this subsidized by the European taxpayer.

On April Fools day activists in 16 cities in 10 countries across Europe pranked gas lobby leaders by launching a guerilla communication campaign to “help the fossil gas industry to finally tell the truth”.

15 Local groups in Denmark, UK, Portugal, France, Catalunya, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands organized this guerilla communication campaign to challenge the fossil gas industry narrative of gas as a clean, just, financially-viable, green fuel, and to refocus attention on the massive industry lobbying and greenwashing misinformation campaigns taking over our cities.

The Facts

Fossil gas is a climate-polluting fuel that in Europe is already responsible for more CO2 emissions than coal.

Fossil Gas is about 95% methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas that is 118 times more potent than CO2 while in the atmosphere

According to a report by CEO, Gas Lobby groups spend an estimated 100million/ year and deploy over 1,000 industry lobbyists in order to sell the idea that gas is good.

European is responsible for about half of global gas imports. Any new import infrastructure in Europe is directly tied to the global fracking boom and human rights abuses around the world.

European public institutions have already given hundreds of billions of Euros of public money to build unnecessary fossil gas import infrastructure.

In Lisbon,

“Our future is CO2lonialism” and “more profit, less people” are the phrases that can be found this morning on fake billboards around Lisbon, with the brand image of the Portuguese company Galp. Galp’s slogans can be read on the panels, with the slogan #PartilhaBoaEnergia appearing on a poster referring to Cabo Delgado, and #LifeAtGalp referring to layoffs and profit sharing. This action is part of the international #CleanGasIsADirtyLie campaign that took place on this April Fool’s day in 10 countries across Europe, and aims to “help the fossil gas industry to finally tell the truth about “natural” gas”.

“What is happening in Cabo Delgado cannot be dissociated from the international gas project in which Galp has a stake, with part of the construction being carried out by the Portuguese companies Mota-Engil and Gabriel Couto, and financing provided by Millenium BCP,” reveals Daniel Ribeiro, an activist with the Mozambican organisation Justiça Ambiental. Daniel also refers that “the colonial pattern” continues, since “decisions in Portugal aggravate the impact of the climate crisis on the populations of its former colonies” (the Environmental Impact Assessment of the gas project in Mozambique states that it will increase greenhouse gas emissions of the entire country by 10% by 2022), “expropriate 550 families, fertilizing the indignation that terrorism converts into action; they contribute directly to corruption in Africa”, referring to the transfer to the Mozambican government of 2 billion dollars by Credit Suisse and VTB bank, and “they deteriorate the freedom of the press, with the disappearances, detentions and torture of journalists who report on the gas industry in Cabo Delgado. Daniel finishes by saying that “at the end of the day, they still come up with international military interventions that safeguard first the interests of companies and lastly those of the communities that have not benefited for years from foreign investment and are now dragged into another disgrace that is the armed conflict.

The solidarity of the Mozambican activists of Justiça Ambiental joins that of the Portuguese Climáximo, such as Mariana Rodrigues, who states that “it is ironic that it is precisely on the day of the lies that someone comes to give a push for the truth about Galp to be told. She adds that “what is happening to Galp is neither energy transition nor social justice” because “it is closing refineries only for economic reasons, without any kind of alternatives for those who depend on that work” and “wants to double oil and gas exploration in the next ten years in the same countries that Portugal colonized in the past, where some of the least responsible and most vulnerable communities in the world are”.

Justiça Ambiental / Friends of the Earth Mozambique and Climáximo show total solidarity with this action because “if Galp were as sustainable as it is claimed to be, it would have a commitment already signed years ago to 100% renewable production, it would guarantee jobs to all the people affected by this transition, retraining them for renewable production, and it would compensate all the communities that it has directly affected throughout its several decades of damage”. The activists thus argue that a “just decolonial transition” in Galp would imply “the immediate departure from Cabo Delgado, its public control and planned dismantling, through a democratic management that involves workers, communities affected by the transition and communities affected by the climate crisis, and that prioritizes the well-being and growth of people and ecosystems, over company profits and economic growth.”

Comunicado de imprensa em português.

What does Cabo Delgado have to do with the Matosinhos refinary?

A CO2lonialist company that delivers neither social justice nor energy transition.

Spread the word to help Galp tell the truth and don’t be fooled on the April Fools’ Day.

Cabo Delgado:

+10% emissions by 2022
550 families evicted
+ indignation, where terrorism is recruiting
2 billion dollars in corruption for the Mozambican government via Credit Suisse and VTB bank
journalists covering gas projects disappearing, detained and tortured
military intervention by Portugal to save the corporations rather than the people

Matosinhos:

refinary closed due to economic reasons
no workers’ involvement in the decision
no job alternatives

Galp further wants to double its oil and gas production, in Portuguese ex-colonies, in the same 10 years when we must cut global emissions by half.

We demand:

immediate withdrawal from Cabo Delgado
public control and phase-out
democratic management with the workers and the communities affected by the transition and by the climate crisis