The absolute gem that is Thurso. Photo: Roger Sharp
It was, even for Greenpeace, an audacious stunt. With UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on holiday in California, several activists climbed on the roof of his mansion and draped it in oily-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences of a new drilling frenzy.”
The action came just days after the Prime Minister had promised to “max out” the North Seas oil and gas fields, by granting over 100 drilling licenses. This includes the Rosebank Oil Field, the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea. It is projected to provide 500 million barrels of oil over its lifetime. Most of this will be exported, and even when it comes online will only supply around three weeks’ worth of gas every year for the UK.
Rosebank is located to the north of Scotland, 85 miles to the west of the Shetland Islands, in waters just over 1,000 meters deep. As the crow flies, it is just 200 miles from the UK’s premier surf spot of Thurso, a world-class righthander and previous home of the QS event the Coldwater Classic.
And in another surfing link, the £4.5 billion project will be developed by oil and gas giant Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian government and holds a 40 percent stake in the field. You might remember it was Equinor who proposed the exploration of new oil and gas fields in South Australia.
Greenpeace at work.
That was stopped by a campaign called The Fight For The Bight in 2020. It has since been called the biggest coastal environmental action in Australian history. It grew from a tiny grassroots group down in the Bight to a national movement involving tens of thousands of people – surfers and coastal communities stood alongside campaigners from The Wilderness Society, the Great Australian Bight Alliance, and Surfrider Foundation Australia.
The announcement by Sunak follows in the aftermath of a series of climate temperature records. The Inertia reported recently how “July will officially be the hottest month ever recorded since we’ve been keeping decent track of it for the last 174 years… and researchers believe that the last time the planet was this warm was somewhere around 120,000 years ago.”
It also came hot on the heels, if you will pardon the pun, of a European summer that featured a series of extreme weather events. This included the Cerberus Heatwave, named after the hound of Hades from Greek mythology. It was one of the first major named heatwaves in history; with temperatures exceeding the previous record of 48 °C (118 °F) and breaking the record for the hottest ever recorded in Europe. Fires ravaged Greece, Portugal and Italy and led to record-breaking high temperatures and ice loss in the Arctic.
Micah Lester, enjoying Thurso’s fruits. Photo: Roger Sharp
The Stop Rosebank campaign therefore should be a galvanizing issue that surfers of the UK, Europe and beyond can get behind. The Fight For the Bight, led by surfers and coastal communities, showed that grassroots campaigns can overture even the most powerful oil and gas interests and the governments that pave their way. Elsewhere in the North Sea, in 2022 a powerful network of community groups and climate protesters forced Shell to withdraw from the Cambo Oil field, a smaller, but significant oil and gas development.
“Surfers have the privilege of being in the ocean, and with that comes a rare experience of how it works and its value,” said Hugo Tagholm, ocean activist and Executive Director at Oceana UK. He’s also the founder of the UK’s Surfers Against Sewage.
“Surfers need to use this knowledge to protect the environment for other people and future generations. Few are better placed, but we need to act. I hear too many surfers talking about being in touch with the environment without doing anything to protect it.”
Greenpeace, and their activists, many of whom have been arrested and who will certainly be prosecuted, have today made clear that we can’t sit back and watch as governments and big oil take steps to stop the transition to renewable energy. Surfers and ocean lovers now need to lend the voice, time and expertise to stop Equinor’s putting profits before climate action.
For more info and ways to get involved hit any of these links: StopCambo.org, sas.org.uk, or Oceana.org.
