RENNES (awp/afp) – The environmental defense NGO Greenpeace denounced on Saturday the mooring in Montoir-de-Bretagne (Loire-Atlantique) of an LNG carrier carrying liquefied gas from Russia, considering that “the fossil fuels were financing Vladimir Putin’s war.
Greenpeace condemned the arrival of “Boris Vilkitsky” while “the responsibility of fossil fuels in the war in Ukraine is strongly denounced by environmental organizations”, underlines in a press release the NGO.
According to the British union Unison, the “Boris Vilkitsky”, flying the Cypriot flag and carrying Russian gas, was turned back on Friday from the Isle of Grain (Kent, south-east of England), where the dockers refused to let it go. unload.
“Departing from the port of Sabetta, in the Russian Arctic, on February 25, the LNG carrier is carrying a cargo of liquefied gas from the Yamal site, of which TotalEnergies is a 20% partner”, according to Greenpeace.
A dozen activists from the NGO, in inflatable boats and on the quay, were present this afternoon “to denounce these links between TotalEnergies and the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin, and to recall that fossil fuels are fueling this war”, according to the same source.
“France cannot condemn the war in Ukraine while letting a French company take advantage of its links with the Russian oligarchs and their business in fossil fuels”, declared Hélène Bourges, head of the fossil fuel campaign for Greenpeace France, quoted in the press release.
Joined in Paris, an industrial source defended the European position on the issue.
“If the European Union has not put energy and gas within the scope of the sanctions, it is because it considers that Europe needs them at this stage”, she commented. .
“It would therefore be paradoxical for the French State to ask, for example, TotalEnergies, which produces liquefied natural gas in Russia and sends part of it to Europe, to leave the country. In this type of extremely complex situation, the sanctions set the framework within which a company can or cannot work with Russia,” according to this source.
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