‘Oil Orgy’ protest to blockade Canada House : Canada’s ‘Dirty Diplomacy’ threatening EU climate legislation

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Protesters will blockade the annual Canada Europe Energy Summit, on Tuesday  November 20^th at 8:30 am with a performance-style protest.  They will be joined by Indigenous Chief Phil Lane from Canada, who will talk about the devastating impacts of tar sands development on First Nations communities in Canada.

The protest, co-ordinated by UK Tar Sands Network, London Rising Tide, People & Planet, Climate Justice Collective, Climate Rush, Occupy Energy, Environment and Equity Group, Corporate Watch and Climate Action Network Canada will involve activists blocking the entrance to Canada House as delegates arrive. The blockade will take the form of street theatre, with participants playing enthusiastic representatives of the oil industry, encouraging people to join the ‘oil orgy’ and holding speech bubbles with ironic slogans such as: ‘Canada: emerging energy supervillain’, ‘Destroy the Fuel Quality Directive!’ and ‘Gag Climate Scientists’.

London has become a hotbed for the Canadian government to train diplomats to promote tar sands as an ethical and reliable source of fuel within the European Union. The summit at Canada House will bring together Canadian and British diplomats, oil companies and financiers to discuss how to expand the highly-polluting tar sands industry, and increase its imports to Europe. Speakers include Gordon Campbell – Canadian High Commissioner, Conservative Energy Minister John Hayes, and many companies involved in tar sands extraction, including Shell, Suncor, Enbridge and Total.

The Canadian government has been recently exposed as mounting an unprecedented lobbying campaign to undermine the EU Fuel Quality Directive, which aims to reduce emissions from transport fuels by 6% by 2020. The UK Coalition Government has been documented as supporting attempts by the Canadian government and British oil giants BP and Shell  to undermine this key piece of EU climate legislation, which would see tar sands imports into Europe limited due to their high carbon intensity (see – “The Lowdown on dirty tar sands diplomacy”)