Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace blocked a shipment of Russian gas from being unloaded at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Sweden on Thursday, the terminal owner and Greenpeace said.
“Activists climbed onto the loading arms at the terminal and they have boats in the water,” a spokeswoman for terminal owner Gasum, Olga Vaisanen, told AFP.
She said the protest at the Nynäshamn terminal near Stockholm began around 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) and was still going on more than five hours later, even though police had forced the activists to climb down from the loading arms.
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Greenpeace’s sailboat “Witness” and activists in kayaks blocked the Dutch-registered LNG tanker Coral Energy from docking and unloading.
They unfurled banners reading “Stop Funding Putin’s War” and “Stop Russian Fossil Trading.”
The activists demanded that the Swedish government immediately stop its import of Russian gas.
“That Russian gas is still allowed to flow into Sweden, more than six months after Putin began his bloody invasion of Ukraine, is unacceptable,” Greenpeace campaigner Karolina Carlsson said in a statement.
“We all know that fossil fuels from Russia are financing the war. The (Swedish) Riksdag has given the government a clear mandate to stop all imports of Russian energy to Sweden and it is Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s duty to act on this,” she says.
There are currently no EU or Swedish sanctions against gas imports from Russia, only against oil and coal.
Sweden’s government said in March that only two percent of Sweden’s total energy supply consists of natural gas, and an estimated half of this may come from Russia.
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