On 31 May a coalition of nonprofits, French cities, and the city of New York presented a demand at a Paris court against French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies. It asked that the Paris judicial court orders the company to suspend all new oil and gas projects worldwide – including liquified natural gas (LNG) ones.
No new oil and gas
14 French local authorities and five nonprofits originally initiated a case against TotalEnergies in January 2020.
The case seeks to compel the fossil fuels company to comply with the Law on the Duty of Vigilance. This obligates companies to make plans with:
reasonable vigilance measures to allow for risk identification and for the prevention of severe violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, serious bodily injury or environmental damage or health risks resulting directly or indirectly from the operations of the company and of the companies it controls…
Specifically, the group is challenging the company’s failure to align its operations with the Paris Agreement. This requires international efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The claimants hope the case will follow in the footsteps of a Dutch court ruling against Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. In 2021, a group of nonprofits successfully challenged Shell over its non-alignment with the Paris Agreement. As a result, the Dutch court ordered the company to accelerate its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, Oil Change International identified that TotalEnergies is planning to approve new projects. Its expansion plans between 2023 and 2025 would:
lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon-dioxide (CO2) pollution over their lifetimes, if the projects’ oil and gas reserves are fully extracted and burned.
Moreover, it stated that current 2030 emissions targets would fail to bring down emissions. Instead, it projected company emissions would stay flat between 2022 and 2030. It pointed out, though, that a fall in emissions is vitally needed to stay within the 1.5C limit.
The latest demand, presented on 31 May, asked the judge to suspend all new oil and gas projects while the full case is reviewed. As it currently stands, the court does not expect to make a final decision on the case before 2024 or 2025. However, the judge is due to announce his decision on the suspension demands on 6 July.
TotalEnergies doubling down on fossil fuel expansion
While claimants sought the court order to suspend the company’s oil and gas expansion, TotalEnergies doubled-down on plans for another of its ‘carbon bomb’ projects. Carbon bombs are projects which create vast carbon dioxide emissions – over one billion tonnes – during their lifetime. The company appears, for example, to be taking steps to restart its controversial Mozambique LNG project.
On May 23, Bloomberg reported that the fossil fuel major had agreed to set up a $200m fund for socio-economic development in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. It stated that the announcement signalled that the long-delayed development may soon get under way again.
Bloomberg also detailed that investment in the LNG project is larger than Mozambique’s entire gross domestic product (GDP). It therefore argued that it would be transformational for the country.
However, the new fund would represent just 1% of the $20bn that financiers are investing in the gas project.
A 2022 report by Friends of the Earth Europe and Justiça Ambiental argued that revenues from LNG projects in the region will first and foremost benefit the foreign companies involved and in this process billions are lost for Mozambique through tax evasion structures set up by the companies, a weak fiscal context and low governmental capacity.
Canary
