Coinciding with yesterday's (carefully planted) announcement in Correio da Mahnã that Portugal’s Galp Energia had suspended its oil exploration ambitions off the Costa Vicentina, (Click here) the company’s Lisbon headquarters has been invaded by fish, crabs and molluscs.
Activists from the EZLN, (Zoological Army for the Freedom of Nature), dressed in suitably maritime costumes, invaded the oil company’s office in protest against the exploration for oil and gas off Portugal’s coastline.
Since the fake news broke that Galp and its Italian partner, ENI, had given up on the test drilling off Aljezur, the company now has denied ever speaking to a Correio da Mahnã journalist and today said it was hurrying to get ready to drill within the allotted dates.
Anti-oil groups were not fooled by the Galp ‘announcement,’ with local media advising that the announcement by the oil giant was likely to be fake news, especially at a time when Galp’s share price is heading downhill and the test drilling preparations on-shore are nearly complete.
The EZLN certainly grabbed headlines today with its bold protest and equally forthright statement that it intends, “with this counterattack to make clear to Galp Energia and ENI that if they continue in their intentions to explore for oil and gas here and everywhere, they will collide against the wall of our iron will and the leviathan that is our resistance to being exterminated and to see our habitats devastated.”
"If there is cancellation of the test well planned for off Aljezur, this is a victory for nature and the seas, but we know that there are still concession contracts that have to be cancelled and we will be in the front line until the final victory. We make it clear that the response to any incursion into the Alentejo, Peniche or Douro Basin sea areas will trigger an escalation of the hostilities and our tsunami-sized response.”
The video of the invasion has swept across social media today and has done much again to highlight the government’s continuing position that oil and gas drilling and extraction is a good thing, even though the royalty deals struck between the State and the wily oil companies are among the most one-sided in the industry and despite unquantifiable environmental risks.
To view the EZNL protest Video, Click HERE
