The Nanterre public prosecution office in France started investigations against oil and gas giant TotalEnergies in December 2021 for allegedly misleading commercial practice, investigative media Mediapart revealed on Thursday.
The French multinational has been under fire from environmental NGOs for years, but this is the first time it faces formal prosecution regarding “greenwashing” practices, Mediapart found.
The investigation was launched in December 2021, French courts confirmed to Mediapart on Thursday. It followed a complaint environmental NGOs Wild Legal, Sea Shepherd France and Darwin Climax Coalitions filed in October 2020 that claims the oil giant is directly responsible for significant air pollution and “environmental lies”.
In the spring of 2022, the same NGOs lodged another complaint for practices of so-called “ecocide” – a recent addition to French law that refers to deliberate and intentional environmental damage.
The courts have not yet said whether formal investigations would be launched on the grounds of this second complaint.
Another group of NGOs filed a lawsuit against TotalEnergies in January 2020, asking that it be “ordered to take all necessary measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, with the municipalities of New York City and Paris joining the call for litigation in September of last year.
TotalEnergies is regularly accused by civil society stakeholders of the destructive impact its activities have on the environment.
Recently, the group found itself under heavy fire for its controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project between Uganda and Tanzania. Lawmakers in the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution against the pipeline project in September 2022.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had claimed at the time that if TotalEnergies chose “to listen to the European Parliament, we will find another partner to work with”.
In 2021, a Global Environmental Change journal article claimed that TotalEnergies, alongside American rival ExxonMobil, knew in the 1970s that their fossil fuel extraction activities could contribute to global warming.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed this finding, saying that “some oil companies have spread big lies”. “Those responsible must be held accountable”, he added.
(Paul Messad | EURACTIV.com – Edited by Théo Bourgery-Gonse)
Source: euractiv.com