Protesters against oil exploration, biofuel development and GM crops in Portugal manageed to evade security and gain access to a conference on Monday, organised by National Authority for the Fuel Market (ENMC) at Lisbon's Gulbenkian Foundation.
The group of ten demonstrators interrupted the ‘biofuels market’ discussion at the Gulbenkian Foundation and later were questioned by tolerant PSP officers who had been called by Gulbenkian staff."
We are here to protest against oil and gas exploration in Portugal, both on land and at sea," said Vítor, one of the ten who took to the stage holding a banner and distributed leaflets to surprised delegates.
Gulbenkian Foundation security staff locked the conference room doors to stop any of the protesters from leaving and then called the authorities.
The PSP security police turned up quickly as they had been alerted to ‘an unlawful protest’ but finding a group of peaceful young protesters, checked their IDs and let them go.
The protesters did no claim to be part of any particular organisation but said that they felt it necessary to make a stand against oil and gas exploration in Portugal.
The activists made it clear that their action marked the beginning of a movement that opposes the exploitation of oil and gas in Portugal, opposes the current 'greenwashing' of the public resulting from lobbying by those energy companies that endanger water, land, health and the local self-sustainability of the Portuguese population, while sticking to an energy model that has harmful impacts on the future of the planet.
This is the third conference organised by the ENMC but the first where the a conference organiser, in this instance the Gulbenkian Foundation, had felt it necessary to trap the protesters and call the police.
"The purpose of these conferences is to present the issues related to energy and fuel. There have been other protests, such as the one in the Algarve, but that took place with respect for the work in hand, unlike what happened today," said Paulo Carmona, the president of the ENMC, adding that these conferences aim to promote a "public and free reflection" on the fuels sector and that it is normal that there is "dissent and freedom of expression" provided there is no interference with the agenda.
One of the protesters outlined the link between the Gulbenkian Foundation and the oil business, explaining that Gulbenkian is the owner of Partex which in turn is part of a consortium with Repsol that holds offshore concessions in the Algarve and Alentejo exploration blocks.
Another protester said that "biofuels are presented as an environmentally friendly alternative, but in fact also are pollutants and contribute to deforestation while threatening indigenous species in the areas where they are promoted."
Environmental organisations point out that biofuel production leads to forestry monoculture, the replacement of food production with growing GMO grains, greater environmental destruction than coal and oil, and the granting of large production subsidies from the taxpayer to large corporations.
The protester added that behind the seemingly benign biofuels industry are the oil and energy companies and that "people should at least hear about the impact of biofuels on their lives" and see biofuels as the most famous 'false solution' to climate change.
The conference was open to the public, as long as delegates pre-registered, and was led by the ENMC with speakers from the Portuguese Petroleum Companies Association, the Portuguese Biofuel Producers Association, Biooeste, BP, Galp, Prio and Torrejana.
The Alentejo is seen as the new El Dorado for fuel copmpanies with cheap land coupled with much improved irrigation from the new Alqueva reservoir for the production of GM and natural grains to feed into the subsidy-led biofuel industry.
The normally non-committal Gulbenkian Foundation at last has made a comment, albeit unofficially, when an employee in the audience took offence at the protesters, suggesting that “we need to give a lesson to these creeps so that they think twice before trying something like this again” as the doors were locked and the PSP called to deal with the protestors who at least had the cojones to gain access to the conference and make their voices heard.
There has been no official report from the foundation whose Head of Communications, Elisabete Caramelo, was at the conference but has not in the past three years answered a single question put to her by this organ, specifically on the Gulbenkian Foundation’s role in funding the eco-friendly Oceans Initiative while promoting oil and gas exploration off the Algarve coastline.
One of the delegates, a scion of a biofuels business, verbally lashed out at the protesters but the rest of the audience, although disturbed, let the protest go past, perhaps understanding that there are differences of opinion over biofuels.
Portugal’s energy policy has a long way to go before balancing the country’s Paris 2016 commitments on CO2 emissions with the current desire to grasp at anything that looks promising before doing the homework.
