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Activists from the climate, Palestine and West Papuan independence movements picketed BP’s office last night in protest at BP’s ongoing sales of oil to Israel and the operation of liquified natural gas fields in West Papua.
The activists gathered in St James Square outside the company’s London headquarters on the night before the AGM, holding banners that read “BP fuels Israeli war crimes” and “Stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown”.
Protesters accuse BP of complicity with Israel’s war on the Palestinian people through the operation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which supplies oil to Israel.
In February this year BP announced that it would be slashing planned investment in renewables and would increase oil and gas investment to $10 billion a year.
It has been alleged by researchers of oil supply chains that oil from the pipeline is converted into jet fuel for F-35s in Israel. The pipeline supplies 28% of Israel’s crude oil imports.
The protesters also accused BP of abandoning its climate strategy and criticised it for operating in West Papua, a region considered by many to be under military occupation by Indonesia.
Rosie Latchford of Fossil Free London said “we’re here today because it’s the eve of BP’s AGM […] they’ve recently just scrapped their climate targets completely, which research has just shown today will lead to 72,000 excess deaths Global Witness found, and they have also been fuelling the genocide in Palestine over the last few years through the BTC pipeline”.
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Investor Rebellion
The protesters are not the only people critical of BP’s climate targets The Guardian reports that an investor rebellion is brewing and that it is expected that Helge Lund, BP’s chair will be voted out following the scrapping of climate targets.
Increasingly climate protest and pro-Palestine protest run together as companies such as BP present targets that can be pressured by both movements.
The XR offshoot Youth Demand has staged a series of actions over the last few weeks blocking roads and creating pickets linking the economy of fossil fuel extraction to Israel’s war on the Palestinian people.
Leila Shafiee from Energy Embargo for Palestine a group urging states and companies to prevent the flow of energy to Israel as a means to end the war said that they “demand an energy embargo and the end to BP’s complicity with Israel. BP currently fuels Israel’s genocide through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that runs through Azerbaijan and Turkey and this oil is currently 30% of Israel’s total oil imports and once that oil is in Israel it is refined into military grade jet fuel. They are also looting Palestinian waters through renewed gas licenses, and this is while Israel is denying basic necessities to Palestinians and has placed a more brutal energy blockade on Gaza”.
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Shafiee added “in the wake of the genocide […] the general trade union for the Palestinian Federation released a call internationally for activists, unions and organisations to disrupt the flow of energy to Israel. They recognised the role of energy in fuelling the genocidal onslaught. For us in Britan there is no export of jet fuel to Israel, but that does not change the fact that BP, one of the main actors, is a British company headquartered in London”.
Energy Embargo for Palestine works across borders to try and disrupt BP’s supply chain and discredit its reputation or “social license”, explained Shafiee.
Analysis by Oil Change International published last month suggests that BP was among those firms facilitating supplies of crude oil to Israel.
Last December victims of Israel’s war in Gaza began legal proceedings against BP in an attempt to prevent the flow of oil in the BTC pipeline to Israel.
The legal letter sent to BP accused the firm of having violated the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, as well as the prohibition of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law.
BP did not respond to a request for comment.