Greenpeace Nordic and Nature & Youth v. Energy Ministry (The North Sea Fields Case)

On June 29, 2023, two environmental NGOs, Greenpeace Nordic and Natural og Ungdom (Nature & Youth), challenged three administrative decisions whereby the Norwegian Energy Ministry approved the plan for the development and operation of the oil and gas fields of Breidablikk, Yggdrasil, and Tyrving in the North Sea. The three fields in question have been subject to impact assessments by the companies that are operators and licensees for the fields. However, these impact assessments do not include combustion (Scope 3) emissions from the oil and gas produced. In the absence of administrative or specialized environmental courts in the Norwegian legal system, the lawsuit occurred in a civil court. The plaintiffs based their challenge on various legal grounds, including Section 4-2, second paragraph, of the Petroleum Act, alongside Section 22a of the Petroleum Regulations. The interpretation of these statutes was guided by Article 112 of the Norwegian Constitution, emphasizing the right to a healthy environment. Additionally, the challenge was grounded in compliance with the EU Directive on Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA Directive). The plaintiffs also invoked legal sources such as Articles 2 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), on the right to life and right to respect for private life and family life and home, respectively, both independently and in conjunction with Article 14 of the ECHR, prohibiting discrimination. Furthermore, the challenge drew support from Section 104, second paragraph, of the Norwegian Constitution, which focuses on the dignity rights of children and the obligation to incorporate their best interests, and Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the best interests of the child. Further legal theories encompass Norway's Nature Diversity Act and Public Administration Act. Essentially, the plaintiffs argued that the assessment of Scope 3 emissions should have been conducted before issuing the three administrative decisions. In contrast, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, now the Ministry of Energy, asserted that a general-level assessment of Scope 3 emissions by the Ministry sufficed and that there was no explicit requirement for this assessment to be integrated into the specific impact assessments for the Breidablikk, Yggdrasil, and Tyrving fields. On January 18, 2024, the Oslo District Court concluded that all three decisions were unlawful. There is a legal requirement that Scope 3 emissions must be subject to an impact assessment pursuant to Section 4-2 of the Petroleum Act and Section 22a of the Petroleum Regulations, interpreted in light of Article 112 of the Norwegian Constitution (on the right to a healthy environment). This also follows from Article 4 no. 1 of the EU EIA Directive, Article 3 no. 1. Conversely, for the three challenged administrative decisions, no impact assessment of Scope 3 emissions had been carried out, contrary to the Norwegian Supreme Court's ruling in the first Norwegian Climate Case. By referring to the mentioned Supreme Court's decision, the Oslo District Court asserted that the greater the consequences of a measure under review, the stricter the EIA requirements. Similarly, the greater the consequences of a measure, the more thorough the court's procedural review must be. For petroleum activities, courts should not be reluctant to review cases on procedural grounds, in this case, the EIA (p. 27). Differently from the first Norwegian Case, where the challenged decision sprang from a Parliament's resolution, the challenged decisions are of the Ministry's competence, yielding to more judicial scrutiny. In connection to such scrutiny, the Court cited the IPCC AR6, comparative case law, and expert opinions heard during the case hearing. Further, the Court concluded that there is no legal obligation to consider the best interests of children in connection with each individual decision on a plan for development and operation (PDO) of petroleum activities. The Court, therefore, concluded that the decisions are not contrary to section 104 of the Norwegian Constitution and Articles 3 and 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Court concluded that the decisions are not contrary to Articles 2, 8, and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), pending a challenge to the mentioned Supreme Court's decision before the ECtHR. Remarking on remedies, the application for a temporary injunction was granted in that the state is prohibited from adopting other decisions that require valid PDO approval for Breidablikk, Yggdrasil and Tyrving until the validity of the decisions has been finally decided. The state, represented by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, was ordered to reimburse the plaintiffs' legal costs in connection with the case (NOK 3 260 427, circa USD 309,833.49- incl. VAT in compensation for legal costs to the plaintiffs). In addition, the court's fee will be included. On May 16, 2024, the Appeals Court in Oslo (Borgarting lagmannsrett) decided to bifurcate the case. The State's appeal against the Oslo District Court's ruling in the injunction case of January 18, 2024, will be heard during the Court of Appeal's appeal hearing concerning the main case, but the right to enforce the District Court's temporary injunction is suspended until the Court of Appeal has ruled on the appeal against the District Court's ruling. In its judgment from October 14, 2024, the Oslo Court of Appeals reversed the interim injunction. By referring to a report by Rystad Energy, commissioned by the Ministry of Energy, it argued that increased production from the Norwegian continental shelf could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The court also mentioned the complex interplay of economic and societal factors, including lost tax revenue, potential losses for companies and shareholders, job losses, reduced investor confidence in the Norwegian shelf, and implications for European energy supply and security. Except for an argument about risks to the sand eel population, the appellants' claims were showcased as unrelated to the fields but rather constituting a broader challenge to Norwegian petroleum activities, which the court noted should first be assessed by the Norwegian Parliament and government, not by the courts. The court denied that the principle of effectiveness of EEA (EIA) law and the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment by the ECHR could offer counterarguments to the denial. In April 2025, the Supreme Court of Norway reversed the appellate decision and remanded the case to the Oslo Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court held that the EEA law principle of effectiveness—and the related principle of effective protection of EEA rights—requires Norwegian courts to grant temporary measures if it is established, or made probable, that breaches of the EU’s Project Directive have resulted in inadequate impact assessments leading to irreversible environmental harm. In such cases, the state has a duty to halt the consequences of these EEA violations, provided that the court finds it probable that the directive has been breached and the general conditions for issuing a temporary measure are otherwise satisfied. Conversely, the Supreme Court maintained that the Oslo Court of Appeal found that it lacked the authority to grant such a measure and therefore did not conduct a substantive assessment. In the new hearing on the request for a temporary measure, the Court of Appeal must assess whether the basic conditions—main claim, legal grounds, and proportionality—are met, but the proportionality assessment under § 34-1(2) of the Dispute Act is a specific judicial evaluation and cannot be based on the idea that courts have limited authority. If it is made probable that the EU’s Project Directive has been violated and the other legal conditions are met, then the discretionary authority provided in § 34-1(1) of the Dispute Act must be exercised to grant a temporary measure. Under the Dispute Act, the state must cover the appellants’ legal costs, a total of NOK 1,322,516 for the Supreme Court proceedings. On November 14, 2025, the Borgarting Court of Appeal delivered its judgment and order following the remand by the Supreme Court and the May 21, 2025 advisory opinion of the EFTA Court. The proceedings concerned the plans for development and operation of the Breidablikk, Tyrving, and Yggdrasil petroleum projects. The Court of Appeal discontinued the part of the appeal concerning the validity of the Ministry’s original 2021 and 2023 approvals because, following the Oslo District Court’s judgment, the Ministry had obtained supplementary assessments of combustion emissions and issued new decisions on August 28 and December 20, 2024 declining to reverse the approvals. The Court therefore reviewed the validity of these later non-reconsideration decisions. Giving substantial weight to the EFTA Court’s advisory opinion, the Court of Appeal held that greenhouse gas emissions arising from the eventual combustion of oil and gas extracted and sold to third parties constitute likely environmental effects of the petroleum projects under Directive 2011/92/EU, as amended by Directive 2014/52/EU. Such combustion emissions must therefore be investigated and assessed as part of the environmental impact assessment process. The court found that the Ministry’s supplementary process remained deficient. In particular, the Ministry had not clearly based its assessment on the projects’ gross combustion emissions; had not adequately considered the cumulative combustion emissions of Norwegian petroleum production; had not assessed the emissions against the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C; and had not sufficiently evaluated the direct and indirect effects specified in Article 3 of the Directive, including global effects. The Ministry had also failed to provide the required reasoned conclusion explaining why the projects should be approved despite their significant climate effects. The court referred to Article 112 of the Norwegian Constitution, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland and Greenpeace Nordic and Others v. Norway, and the International Court of Justice’s July 23, 2025 advisory opinion on states’ climate obligations. It stated that the environmental assessment must enable the competent authority to determine whether approval is compatible with Norway’s national and international obligations and that climate protection must carry considerable weight when balanced against competing considerations. The Court of Appeal declared invalid the Ministry’s August 28 and December 20, 2024 decisions not to reverse the approvals. It held that the procedural defects required invalidation under both Norwegian administrative law and EEA law, emphasizing that the approval stage represented the final opportunity to conduct the legally required assessment before petroleum extraction was authorized. The court nevertheless declined to order the immediate suspension of development and production. It reasoned that the violations concerned procedural deficiencies rather than a finding that the Ministry lacked substantive authority, and that an immediate halt would be disproportionate in light of the consequences for operators, contractual relationships, employment, local communities, and Norway’s role as an energy supplier. The court instead ordered the Ministry to reconsider the applications so that new decisions could be adopted within six months of the Court of Appeal’s ruling or, if the validity ruling had not become final by then, within two months after a final judgment. Any retrospective environmental assessment must examine both past and future environmental effects, avoid circumvention of EEA law, and be conducted while all outcomes remain genuinely open. The State appealed. The Supreme Court of Norway agreed to hear the case in an enlarged formation, and the appeal was heard in August 2026. A final Supreme Court judgment is pending.

Supreme Court Decision (in Norwegian)

Judgment (in Norwegian)

Judgment (in Norwegian)

Summons (in Norwegian)