Eco-activists Just Stop Oil have set up for a fourth day of protests arriving in the dead of night to blockade the Esso West London Oil Terminal near Heathrow Airport.
Thirty activists from the Extinction Rebellion-affiliated group used two bamboo structures to sucessfully block fuel lorries from entering the busy terminal at 4am on Monday.
The group said it will only leave the site when the Government “agrees to stop all new fossil fuel investments immediately”.
They have unravelled two large banners–one to promote a round of upcoming protests in the capital and the other ‘Stop Fossil Fuels Now’.
It is the fourth day in a row in which oil facilities across the UK have been blocked as part of ongoing action by Extinction Rebellion and the Just Stop Oil coalition.
Later on Monday, activists from Ocean Rebellion pretended to clean up a fake oil spill from the ground during a demonstration set at the entrance of the International Maritime Organisation HQ in central London.
They held up signs reading ‘As the Sea Dies, We Die’ amid scattered fishing nets and “nurdles”, which are used to create plastic products, they claim have been contaminating our oceans.
230,000 tonnes of nurdles end up in oceans every year and are often mistaken for food by whales, dolphins and other fish.
The activists swept up the microplastics and posed with oil soaked briefcases full of fake cash.
Over the weekend, Just Stop Oil claimed to hold oil depots in Grays, Purfleet, Buncefield, Tamworth and Central Birmingham.
They celebrated reports that petrol pumps ran dry across Kent after their blockade.
Emma Osborn-Wilkes, MD at Halso Fuels, told the BBC that activists had clambered on top of a tanker, wrapped themselves in plastic sheets and glued themselves there for 14 hours.
She said: “These tankers are very dangerous essentially they are a bomb. So in the wrong hands if people are using a mobile phone or are smoking it’s just very dangerous.”
Every new oil and gas facility tightens the noose around the necks of our young people.
— JustStopOil (@JustStop_Oil) April 3, 2022
If the media will not communicate their predicament they will have no choice but to take the microphone.@LBC @TomSwarbrick1 pic.twitter.com/H1XGZvrXbL
An activist also glued himself to a microphone live on air as he was interviewed on LBC.
Andrew Smith from Extinction Rebellion said: “Right now, governments are choosing to exploit the crisis in Ukraine to hand out oil licences and continue the fossil fuel economy that’s destroying us.
“They are exploiting public fear and disorientation at a time of crisis when people’s bills are going up to advance corporate-friendly policies incapable of attracting democratic support.”
More than 200 people were arrested over the weekend. Warwickshire Police said the force made 54 arrests for offences including criminal damage, obstructing the highway and public order in relation to the ongoing protest at Kingsbury Oil Terminal.
In Essex, officers arrested 155 people following protests in the Thurrock district.
