Norway Takes Oilfield Climate Battle to Supreme Court

The Norwegian government is asking the country’s Supreme Court to overturn lower-court rulings that invalidated the development permits of three new oilfields in Norway’s North Sea.

The case was brought to court three years ago by environmental organizations Greenpeace Nordic and Nature og Ungdom (Nature & Youth). In 2023, the campaigners challenged three administrative decisions of the Norwegian Energy Ministry, which had approved the plan for the development and operation of the oil and gas fields of Breidablikk, Yggdrasil, and Tyrving in the North Sea.

Breidablikk, operated by Equinor, and Yggdrasil, developed and operated by Aker BP, are already producing oil and gas. Tyrving, another Aker BP development, is expected to start up later this year.

The campaigners argued that the environmental assessments and reviews by the Norwegian authorities granted the development and operation licenses without considering the Scope 3 emissions of the customers’ burning of the oil and gas produced at these fields. 

In November 2025, the Norwegian government lost an appeal to have the invalidated licenses overturned. However, the court of appeal allowed production at the two producing fields to continue and gave the state of Norway six months to rectify the shortcomings in the assessment of the plans for field development.   

“The state will argue that the additional assessments of foreign emissions now clearly satisfy all the requirements,” the Office of the Attorney General said, as carried by Reuters, as the Supreme Court begins hearings on the case on Monday.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for four days until August 27, with the ruling expected later this year.

The Norwegian government is fighting for the new oilfields as it strongly supports the country’s oil and gas industry, a major contributor to GDP and jobs, as well as to the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund with $2.3 trillion in assets.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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