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‘The Carbon Cash Machine’ examines the cash earnings to shareholders over seven years, profiles the beneficiaries, and considers the implications for divestment campaigns.

We found:

• Annual cash earnings made by shareholders in the UK’s two largest oil companies (BP and Shell) are around triple the amount they were when the Paris Agreement was signed in December 2015. Their total earnings since the Agreement amount to £131bn.
• £131bn could fund solar panel installation for approximately 13 million houses. Less than a fifth of the figure could cover the costs of the 40 new hospitals the government has pledged. One tenth could meet the shortfall in UK social care provision.
• The eight largest shareholders in both BP and Shell have made a total of £28.7bn since the Paris Agreement. Those shareholders are: abrdn PLC; BlackRock Inc.; Norges Bank Investment Management; Legal & General Investment Management Ltd.; SAFE Investment Co. Ltd.; State Street Global Advisors Inc; UBS Asset Management AG; and Vanguard Group Inc.
• The top three shareholders of both increased the proportion of their collective holding of BP from 11.48% in 2016 to 17.71% in 2022. The same major shareholders increased the proportion of their collective holding of Shell from 13.08% in 2016 to 15.89% in 2022.

Introduction: “spewing out cash”

In the second half of 2022, as energy prices continued to soar and the cost-of- living crisis deepened, the business media began reporting new highs in oil company dividend payments with remarkable hyperbole. In August, Bloomberg headlined with “Big Oil is Paying Out Years of Dividends in One Day.” In November, Barron’s noted “Oil Companies Lift Their Dividends as Cash Rolls In”. A few months later, Reuters reported “Bumper profits fuel surge in dividends, buybacks at oil firms”. The bonanza continued as a number of oil firms reported record profits for the last quarter of 2022. And in February 2023, Forbes led with the headline “We’ve Struck Oil: 3 Energy Plays Yielding Up To 11% in Dividends.”

All of the hyperbole is justified. Oil company dividends are rising very rapidly indeed. This is largely because – to quote one trader – the energy industry has become “a broken ATM spewing out cash.”

According to even the conventional logic of the markets, it isn’t supposed to be like this. That logic claims that oil company dividends should be influenced by several factors, including the shifting energy balance towards renewables, increasing regulatory pressure to reduce emissions, and the rise of divestment campaigns. As the climate crisis accelerates, shifts towards a low-carbon economy should have led to a decline in demand for fossil fuels, and investors were supposed to become increasingly concerned about the long-term sustainability of oil companies. Yet oil companies are making record cash payouts to their shareholders.

This report reaches behind the corporate veil to identify the major beneficiaries of the UK’s largest fossil fuel companies, BP and Shell. It analyses their cash earnings from those shares since the Paris Agreement on climate change, and juxtaposes their corporate spin on environmental targets with facts and figures on their fossil fuel investments.

Our aim is to provide a rich analysis of the large institutional shareholders who have retained their investments in oil and gas – in a period that most observers of the Paris Agreement might reasonably have expected to be a time of divestment in fossil fuels.

A second report will go on to ask profound questions for the fossil fuel divestment movement and how it might develop more effective forms of campaigning to ultimately stop the flow of capital into the industry.

Read the full report here.

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About the Fellowship

This is a one-year, full-time post with a support grant of £20,400, paid by a monthly stipend from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust. The fellow will work in collaboration with the Corporate Watch team.

The pandemic created a perfect storm for politicians to sell the lie that private healthcare companies help relieve pressure on the NHS, and we’re already witnessing the emergence of a two-tier health system. At the time of writing, junior doctors are out on strike again, staff shortages are rising, and the morale of dedicated NHS workers is at rock bottom. Against this backdrop, private companies are scooping up billions in lucrative contracts. The successful applicant will conduct research into the extent of NHS privatisation both now and in recent history and identify which corporations are profiting most.

The findings will be communicated through a variety of media, aiming to ensure information reaches our target audiences. You will be supported in your work by members of the Corporate Watch team, as well as an extensive network of campaigners, and researchers.

The aim of the project is to build the fellow’s research skills and experience, whilst enhancing Corporate Watch’s capacity to carry out strategic investigations in support of struggles for social justice.

The post:

• Income: You will receive a tax-free support grant of £20,400 via a monthly stipend from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.
• Support: This fellowship is intended as an opportunity for you to develop your research skills and we actively encourage applicants from those without an academic background. You will be supported by members of the Corporate Watch team throughout.
• Location: This role is open to anyone able to work remotely and travel approximately every three months to Bristol or London.
• Hours: 28 hours/week with fully flexible working arrangements.

About you:

• You want to develop strong research skills and already have some knowledge of key issues and legislation related to the NHS crisis and the impact this will have on us all, and for vulnerable/marginalised communities in particular.
• You will have excellent written communication skills, including experience producing online communications, campaigning or on fundraising equivalent topics.
• You understand the importance of solidarity, and the value of collaboration within a radical workers’ co-op.
• You are self-motivated and able to work autonomously as well as collaboratively with colleagues.
• You are able to multitask, be flexible, diligent and respond to shifting demands and fast-moving events.
• You are committed to Corporate Watch’s anti-capitalist aims and values.

About Us

Corporate Watch is a research group established in 1996 that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism. Our motto is ‘information for action’: we know that people can fight and win, even against powerful enemies like corporations and governments. Good information helps people to understand the forces we’re up against, spot their weaknesses, and to campaign strategically and effectively. We provide rigorous, reliable, and strategically useful research and analysis to support groups organising against corporate power and aim to demystify how capitalism and specific industries work to the wider public.

We are a small workers’ cooperative and maintain our independence by never taking money from state or corporate institutions.

We are a rarity in being a research group that is firmly rooted in – and at the service of – grassroots social movements. We work collaboratively with campaigns for much of our research, with most projects starting as a request from such groups. At times our research has played a pivotal role in the success of campaigns – from providing financial information to unions negotiating for pay rises, to exposing airlines involved in the deportation machine.

We particularly welcome and encourage applications from those who are underrepresented in research and journalism including Black people, People of Colour, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) people, refugees, working-class people, disabled people and ex-prisoners.

To apply:

Please click here to read the full research project brief, job description and person specification before applying.

Please send the following to cwjobs [at]  corporatewatch.org by 30th August 2023.

• A cover letter (2 pages max) telling us about yourself, your relevant experience, how you would benefit from the fellowship and outlining how you meet the person specification criteria.
• Your CV (2 pages max).

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Dates: 30th September – 1st October 2023, 10-5pm, in person.

9 October – 19 November online.

Location: Bristol (two days in person); remote (over six weeks).

Corporate Watch is running a six-week, hands-on training programme on how to investigate and report on companies sustaining structural racism. This is a fully-funded programme, aimed at Black people, people of colour, and other marginalised groups.

The first part of the programme will be a two-day, in-person course in Bristol. Following this, participants will work with the support and supervision of Corporate Watch to produce a collaborative investigation on a company, or sector, involved in sustaining institutional racism.

They will receive mentoring on writing techniques, fact-checking and editing along the way.

The six-week project will focus on companies sustaining white supremacy. These could be prison, security, or border profiteers; media outlets feeding fear and xenophobia; companies perpetuating social exclusion in health, social care, or education; or arms manufacturers and other companies continuing the legacy of colonialism in the Global South.

The aim of the project is to boost knowledge and expertise among groups most on the receiving end of corporate abuses in the UK, and ultimately strengthen campaigns for justice and liberation.

This project has been funded by Network for Social Change, and made possible by the ongoing support of Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Practicalities

• The course is free, food and accommodation will be provided, and scholarships and travel bursaries are available for eight participants who are Black, people of colour, refugees and migrants, Gypsy Roma and Traveller (GRT), ex-prisoners and other people affected by the criminal “justice” system, or those from other marginalised backgrounds. This is to reduce barriers to participation.
• The training, mentoring time, and investigation work will be paid at a rate of £14 p/h.
• Participants must be based in the UK, since part of the programme takes place in person.
• There will be limited places on the weekend course available for other participants, however these will be unfunded.
• We aim to be as flexible as possible during the six-week part of the training to accommodate those with caring responsibilities and/or other employment commitments.

Who should apply

• This programme is for Black people, people of colour, refugees and migrants, Gypsy Roma and Traveller (GRT), ex-prisoners and other people affected by the criminal “justice” system, or people from other marginalised backgrounds.
• We are especially interested in hearing from applicants who are active in campaigns or projects for social and racial justice.
• If there is space, we will consider opening up the weekend course to other participants (this will be free but unpaid). Please get in touch if you are interested but do not fall under one of the above categories.

Content

The content of the two-day training session may vary slightly depending on participants, but is likely to cover:

• The basics: understanding the different types of company structure and who makes the decisions, developing a research strategy appropriate to each case, and general research tips.
• Core tools for corporate research: how to effectively use key resources such as Companies House, annual reports and contracts databases, as well as advanced internet search techniques.
• Following the money: how to read and analyse company accounts.
• Leverage: Finding other evidence of corporate malpractice, including the revolving door with government.
• Corporate databases: How to use tools like Orbis, Capital IQ, and free alternatives such as OpenCorporates.
• Investigating people: methods of researching shareholders, directors and owners.

We will use examples from companies specifically involved in perpetuating structural racism. Towards the end of the weekend, we will do a mapping exercise on UK companies in maintaining racial inequalities today, with a view to developing collaborative research project ideas to take forward.

Over the subsequent six-weeks, participants will work remotely to put what they have learnt into practice by completing the research project with the support of Corporate Watch staff. A total of up to 18 paid hours per participant are available for this work; hours are flexible around jobs and other commitments. In addition, six hours of funded training sessions will be delivered remotely on writing, fact-checking and editing, as well as 1:1 support.

Background and Aims

Corporate Watch is a research group established in 1996 that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism. Our motto is ‘information for action’: we know that people can fight and win, even against powerful enemies like corporations and governments. Good information helps to understand the forces we’re up against, spot their weaknesses, and to campaign strategically and effectively.

What we do:

• Targeted research for grassroots campaign groups, e.g. profiling a particular company, digging into its accounts, uncovering scandals, finding weak points.
• Broader research and analysis to demystify how capitalism and specific industries work to the wider public.
• DIY training to share our research skills. This includes our free online course: Know Your Enemy: Practical Research Training. We also offer bespoke training to groups and organisations.

We have a long history of “skilling up” groups and movements on how to do company research. But we know that this information is not always easily accessible to campaigners, community organisers and activists – especially as people need to juggle their political work around jobs and other life commitments. Since those most impacted by corporate power are often least in a position to engage with our training, we recognise that more investment of time and money is required if we are to minimise barriers to participation. Therefore, we have decided to offer this as a funded programme.

Deadline and how to apply

Please download and complete this form, telling us a bit about yourself, your motivation for applying, and any involvement in grassroots campaigning or activism you feel able to share. Return it to: training [at] corporatewatch.org by 30th August 2023.

All information will be dealt with confidentially. If you would like to send us your message via PGP encryption, you can find our key here (note, you will have to complete the form questions within the text body of the email). We will respond as promptly as we can.

The post Research Against Racism: investigating companies that sustain structural inequalities appeared first on Corporate Watch.

In tandem with plans to house migrants at surplus military sites, the move was heralded by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman as a way of mitigating the £6m-a-day cost of hotel accommodation amid the massive ongoing backlog of asylum claims, as well as deterring refugees from making the dangerous channel crossing to the UK. Several protests have been organised against the project already, while over ninety migrants’ rights groups and hundreds of individual campaigners have signed an open letter to the Home Secretary calling for the plans to be scrapped, describing the barge as a “floating prison.”

Corporate Watch has researched into the Bibby Line Group’s operations and financial interests. We found that:

• The Bibby Stockholm vessel was previously used as a floating detention centre in the Netherlands, where undercover reporting revealed violence, sexual exploitation and poor sanitation.

• Bibby Line Group is more than 90% owned by members of the Bibby family, primarily through trusts. Its pre-tax profits for 2021 stood at almost £31m, which they upped to £35.5m by claiming generous tax credits and deferring a fair amount to the following year.

• Management aboard the vessel will be overseen by an Australian business travel services company, Corporate Travel Management, who have previously had aspersions cast over the financial health of their operations and the integrity of their business practices.

• Another beneficiary of the initiative is Langham Industries, a maritime and engineering company whose owners, the Langham family, have longstanding ties to right wing parties.

Key Issues

According to the Home Office, the Bibby Stockholm barge will be operational for at least 18 months, housing approximately 500 single adult men while their claims are processed, with “24/7 security in place on board, to minimise the disruption to local communities.” These measures appear to have been to dissuade opposition from the local Conservative council, who pushed for background checks on detainees and were reportedly even weighing legal action out of concern for a perceived threat of physical attacks from those housed onboard, as well as potential attacks from the far right against migrants held there.

Local campaigners have taken aim at the initiative, noting in the open letter:

“For many people seeking asylum arriving in the UK, the sea represents a site of significant trauma as they have been forced to cross it on one or more occasions. Housing people on a sea barge – which we argue is equal to a floating prison – is morally indefensible, and threatens to re-traumatise a group of already vulnerable people.”

Technically, migrants on the barge will be able to leave the site. However, in reality they will be under significant levels of surveillance and cordoned off behind fences in the high security port area.

If they leave, there is an expectation they will return by 11pm, and departure will be controlled by the authorities. According to the Home Office:

“In order to ensure that migrants come and go in an orderly manner with as little impact as possible, buses will be provided to take those accommodated on the vessel from the port to local drop off points”.

These drop off points are to be determined by the government, while being sited off the coast of Dorset means they will be isolated from centres of support and solidarity.

Meanwhile, the government’s new Illegal Migration Bill is designed to provide a legal justification for the automatic detention of refugees crossing the Channel. If it passes, there’s a chance this might set the stage for a change in regime on the Bibby Stockholm – from that of an “accommodation centre” to a full-blown migrant prison.

An initial release from the Home Office suggested the local voluntary sector would be engaged “to organise activities that keep occupied those being accommodated, potentially involved in local volunteering activity,” though they seemed to have changed the wording after critics said this would mean detainees could be effectively exploited for unpaid labour. It’s also been reported the vessel required modifications in order to increase capacity to the needed level, raising further concerns over cramped living conditions and a lack of privacy.

Bibby Line Group has prior form in border profiteering. From 1994 to 1998, the Bibby Stockholm was used to house the homeless, some of whom were asylum seekers, in Hamburg, Germany. In 2005, it was used to detain asylum seekers in the Netherlands, which proved a cause of controversy at the time. Undercover reporting revealed a number of cases abuse on board, such as beatings and sexual exploitation, as well suicide attempts, routine strip searches, scabies and the death of an Algerian man who failed to receive timely medical care for a deteriorating heart condition. As the undercover security guard wrote:

“The longer I work on the Bibby Stockholm, the more I worry about safety on the boat. Between exclusion and containment I encounter so many defects and feel so much tension among the prisoners that it no longer seems to be a question of whether things will get completely out of hand here, but when.”

He went on:

“I couldn’t stand the way prisoners were treated […] The staff become like that, because the whole culture there is like that. Inhuman. They do not see the residents as people with a history, but as numbers.”

Images of the Bibby Stockholm in 2007, while it was being used as a migrant detention centre in the Netherlands. Images: Joke Kaviaar via Indymedia NL

Discussions were also held in August 2017 over the possibility of using the vessel as accommodation for some 400 students in Galway, Ireland, amid the country’s housing crisis. Though the idea was eventually dropped for lack of mooring space and planning permission requirements, local students had voiced safety concerns over the “bizarre” and “unconventional” solution to a lack of rental opportunities.

Corporate Travel Management & Langham Industries

Although leased from Bibby Line Group, management aboard the Bibby Stockholm itself will be handled by Corporate Travel Management (CTM), a global travel company specialising in business travel services. The Australian-headquartered company also recently received a £100m contract for the provision of accommodation, travel, venue and ancillary booking services for the housing of Ukrainian refugees at local hotels and aboard cruise ships M/S Victoria and M/S Ambition. The British Red Cross warned earlier in May against continuing to house refugees on ships with “isolated” and “windowless” cabins, and said the scheme had left many “living in limbo.”

Founded by CEO Jamie Pherous, CTM was targeted in 2018 by VGI Partners, a group of short-sellers, who identified more than 20 red flags concerning the company’s business interests. Most strikingly, the short-sellers said they’d attended CTM’s offices in Glasgow, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Switzerland. Finding no signs of business activity there, they said it was possible the firm had significantly overstated the scale of its operations. VGI Partners also claimed CTM’s cash flows didn’t seem to add up when set against the company’s reported growth, and that CTM hadn’t fully disclosed revisions they’d made to their annual revenue figures.

Two years later, the short-sellers released a follow-up report, questioning how CTM had managed to report a drop in rewards granted for high sales numbers to travel agencies, when in fact their transaction turnover had grown during the same period. They also accused CTM of dressing up their debt balance to make their accounts look healthier.

CTM denied VGI Partners’ allegations. In their response, they paraphrased a report by auditors EY, supposedly confirming there were no question marks over their business practices, though the report itself was never actually made public. They further claim VGI Partners, as short-sellers, had only released the reports in the hope of benefitting from uncertainty over CTM’s operations.

Despite these troubles, CTM’s market standing improved drastically earlier this year, when it was announced the firm had secured contracts for the provision of travel services to the UK Home Office worth in excess of $3bn AUD (£1.6bn). These have been accompanied by further tenders with, among others, the National Audit Office, HS2, Cafcass, Serious Fraud Office, Office of National Statistics, HM Revenue & Customs, National Health Service, Ministry of Justice, Department of Education, Foreign Office, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The Home Office has not released any figures on the cost of either leasing or management services aboard Bibby Stockholm, though press reports have put the estimated price tag at more than £20,000 a day for charter and berthing alone. If accurate, this would put the overall expenditure for the 18-month period in which the vessel will operate as a detention centre at almost £11m, exclusive of actual detention centre management costs such as security, food and healthcare.

Another beneficiary of the project are Portland Port’s owners, Langham Industries, a maritime and engineering company owned by the Langham family. The family has long-running ties to right-wing parties. Langham Industries donated over £70,000 to the UK Independence Party from 2003 up until the 2016 Brexit referendum. In 2014, Langham Industries donated money to support the re-election campaign of former Clacton MP for UKIP Douglas Carswell, shortly after his defection from the Conservatives. Catherine Langham, a Tory parish councillor for Hilton in Dorset, has described herself as a Langham Industries director (although she is not listed on Companies House). In 2016 she was actively involved in local efforts to support the campaign to leave the European Union. The family holds a large estate in Dorset which it uses for its other line of business, winemaking.

At present, there is no publicly available information on who will be providing security services aboard the Bibby Stockholm.

Images from a 2007 protest against the use of the Bibby Stockholm as a detention centre in the Netherlands. Images: Joke Kaviaar via Indymedia NL

Business Basics

Bibby Line Group describes itself as “one of the UK’s oldest family owned businesses,” operating in “multiple countries, employing around 1,300 colleagues, and managing over £1 billion of funds.” Its head office is registered in Liverpool, with other headquarters in Scotland, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Malaysia, France, Slovakia, Czechia, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Nigeria (see the appendix for more). The company’s primary sectors correspond to its three main UK subsidiaries:

• Bibby Financial Services. A global provider of financial services. The firm provides loans to small- and medium-sized businesses engaged in business services, construction, manufacturing, transportation, export, recruitment and wholesale markets. This includes invoice financing, export and trade finance, and foreign exchanges. Overall, the subsidiary manages more than £6bn each year on behalf of some 9,000 clients across 300 different industry sectors, and in 2021 it brought in more than 50% of the group’s annual turnover.

• Bibby Marine Limited. Owner and operator of the Bibby WaveMaster fleet, a group of vessels specialising in the transport and accommodation of workers employed at remote locations, such as offshore oil and gas sites in the North Sea. Sometimes, as in the case of Chevron’s Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) project in Nigeria, the vessels are used as an alternative to hotels owing to a “a volatile project environment.” The fleet consists of 40 accommodation vessels similar in size to the Bibby Stockholm and a smaller number of service vessels, though the share of annual turnover pales compared to the group’s financial services operations, standing at just under 10% for 2021.

• Garic Ltd. Confined to construction, quarrying, airport, agriculture and transport sectors in the UK, the firm designs, manufactures and purchases plant equipment and machinery for sale or hire. Garic brought in around 14% of Bibby Line Group’s turnover in 2021.

Prior to February 2021, Bibby Line Group also owned Costcutter Supermarkets Group, before it was sold to Bestway Wholesale to maintain liquidity amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In their report for that year, the company’s directors also suggested grant funding from MarRI-UK, an organisation facilitating innovation in maritime technologies and systems, had been important in preserving the firm’s position during the crisis.

History

The Bibby Line Group’s story begins in 1807, when Lancashire-born shipowner John Bibby began trading out of Liverpool with partner John Highfield. By the time of his death in 1840, murdered while returning home from dinner with a friend in Kirkdale, Bibby had struck out on his own and come to manage a fleet of more than 18 ships. The mysterious case of his death has never been solved, and the business was left to his sons John and James.

Between 1891 and 1989, the company operated under the name Bibby Line Limited. Its ships served as hospital and transport vessels during the First World War, as well as merchant cruisers, and the company’s entire fleet of 11 ships was requisitioned by the state in 1939.

By 1970, the company had tripled its overseas earnings, branching into ‘factoring’, or invoice financing (converting unpaid invoices into cash for immediate use via short-term loans) in the early 1980s, before this aspect of the business was eventually spun off into Bibby Financial Services. The group acquired Garic Ltd in 2008, which currently operates four sites across the UK.

Images from a 2007 protest against the use of the Bibby Stockholm as a detention centre in the Netherlands. Images: Joke Kaviaar via Indymedia NL

People

Jonathan Lewis has served as Bibby Line Group’s Managing and Executive Director since January 2021, prior to which he acted as the company’s Chief Financial and Strategy Officer since joining in 2019. Previously, Lewis worked as CFO for Imagination Technologies, a tech company specialising in semiconductors, and as head of supermarket Tesco’s mergers and acquisitions team. He was also a member of McKinsey’s European corporate finance practice, as well as an investment banker at Lazard. During his first year at the helm of Bibby’s operations, he was paid £748,000. Assuming his role at the head of the group’s operations, he replaced Paul Drescher, CBE, then a board member of the UK International Chamber of Commerce and a former president of the Confederation of British Industry.

Bibby Line Group’s board also includes two immediate members of the Bibby family, Sir Michael James Bibby, 3rd Bt. and his younger brother Geoffrey Bibby. Michael has acted as company chairman since 2020, before which he had occupied senior management roles in the company for 20 years. He also has external experience, including time at Unilever’s acquisitions, disposals and joint venture divisions, and now acts as president of the UK Chamber of Shipping, chairman of the Charities Trust, and chairman of the Institute of Family Business Research Foundation.

Michael Bibby

Geoffrey Bibby

Geoffrey has served as a non-executive director of the company since 2015, having previously worked as a managing director of Vast Visibility Ltd, a digital marketing and technology company. In 2021, the Bibby brothers received salaries of £125,000 and £56,000 respectively.

The final member of the firm’s board is David Anderson, who has acted as non-executive director since 2012. A financier with 35 years experience in investment banking, he’s founder and CEO of EPL Advisory – which advises company boards on requirements and disclosure obligations of public markets – and chair of Creative Education Trust, a multi-academy trust comprising 17 schools. Anderson is also chairman at multinational ship broker Howe Robinson Partners, which recently auctioned off a superyacht seized from Dmitry Pumpyansky, after the sanctioned Russian businessman reneged on a €20.5m loan from JP Morgan. In 2021, Anderson’s salary stood at £55,000.

Images from a 2007 protest against the use of the Bibby Stockholm as a detention centre in the Netherlands. Images: Joke Kaviaar via Indymedia NL

Ownership

Bibby Line Group’s annual report and accounts for 2021 state that more than 90% of the company is owned by members of the Bibby family, primarily through family trusts. These ownership structures, effectively entities allowing people to benefit from assets without being their registered legal owners, have long attracted staunch criticism from transparency advocates given the obscurity they afford means they often feature extensively in corruption, money laundering and tax abuse schemes.

According to Companies House, the UK corporate registry, between 50% and 75% of Bibby Line Group’s shares and voting rights are owned by Bibby Family Company Limited, which also retains the right to appoint and remove members of the board. Directors of Bibby Family Company Limited include both the Bibby brothers, as well as a third sibling, Peter John Bibby, who’s formally listed as the firm’s ‘ultimate beneficial owner’ (i.e. the person who ultimately profits from the company’s assets).

Other people with comparable shares in Bibby Family Company Limited are Mark Rupert Feeny, Philip Charles Okell, and Lady Christine Maud Bibby. Feeny’s occupation is listed as solicitor, with other interests in real estate management and a position on the board of the University of Liverpool Pension Fund Trustees Limited. Okell meanwhile appears as director of Okell Money Management Limited, a wealth management firm, while Lady Bibby, Michael and Geoffrey’s mother, appears as “retired playground supervisor.”

Banner against the Bibby in Cornwall. Image: Cornwall Resists

Key Relationships

Bibby Line Group runs an internal ‘Donate a Day’ volunteer program, enabling employees to take paid leave in order to “help causes they care about.” Specific charities colleagues have volunteered with, listed in the company’s Annual Review for 2021 to 2022, include:

• The Hive Youth Zone. An award-winning charity for young people with disabilities, based in the Wirral.

• The Whitechapel Centre. A leading homeless and housing charity in the Liverpool region, working with people sleeping rough, living in hostels, or struggling with their accommodation.

• Let’s Play Project. Another charity specialising in after-school and holiday activities for young people with additional needs in the Banbury area.

• Whitdale House. A care home for the elderly, based in Whitburn, West Lothian and run by the local council.

• DEBRA. An Irish charity set up in 1988 for individuals living with a rare, painful skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa, as well as their families.

• Reaching Out Homeless Outreach. A non-profit providing resources and support to the homeless in Ireland.

Various senior executives and associated actors at Bibby Line Group and its subsidiaries also have current and former ties to the following organisations:

• UK Chamber of Shipping

• Charities Trust

• Institute of Family Business Research Foundation

• Indefatigable Old Boys Association

• Howe Robinson Partners

• hibu Ltd

• EPL Advisory

• Creative Education Trust

• Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited

• The Ambassador Theatre Group Limited

• Pilkington Plc

• UK International Chamber of Commerce

• Confederation of British Industry

• Arkley Finance Limited (Weatherby’s Banking Group)

• FastMarkets Ltd, Multiple Sclerosis Society

• Early Music as Education

• Liverpool Pension Fund Trustees Limited

• Okell Money Management Limited

Finances

For the period ending 2021, Bibby Line Group’s total turnover stood at just under £260m, with a pre-tax profit of almost £31m – fairly healthy for a company providing maritime services during a global pandemic. Their post-tax profits in fact stood at £35.5m, an increase they would appear to have secured by claiming generous tax credits (£4.6m) and deferring a fair amount (£8.4m) to the following year.

Judging by their last available statement on the firm’s profitability, Bibby’s directors seem fairly confident the company has adequate financing and resources to continue operations for the foreseeable future. They stress their February 2021 sale of Costcutter was an important step in securing this, given it provided additional liquidity during the pandemic, as well as the funding secured for R&D on fuel consumption by Bibby Marine’s fleet.

Scandal Sheet

Bibby Line Group and its subsidiaries have featured in a number of UK legal proceedings over the years, sometimes as defendants. One notable case is Godfrey v Bibby Line, a lawsuit brought against the company in 2019 after one of their former employees died as the result of an asbestos-related disease.

In their claim, the executors of Alan Peter Godfrey’s estate maintained that between 1965 and 1972, he was repeatedly exposed to large amounts of asbestos while working on board various Bibby vessels. Although the link between the material and fatal lung conditions was established as early as 1930, they claimed that Bibby Line, among other things:

“Failed to warn the deceased of the risk of contracting asbestos related disease or of the precautions to be taken in relation thereto;

“Failed to heed or act upon the expert evidence available to them as to the best means of protecting their workers from danger from asbestos dust; [and]

“Failed to take all reasonably practicable measures, either by securing adequate ventilation or by the provision and use of suitable respirators or otherwise, to prevent inhalation of dust.”

The lawsuit, which claimed “unlimited damage”’ against the group, also stated that Mr Godfrey’s “condition deteriorated rapidly with worsening pain and debility,” and that he was “completely dependent upon others for his needs by the last weeks of his life.” There is no publicly available information on how the matter was concluded.

In 2017, Bibby Line Limited also featured in a leak of more than 13.4 million financial records known as the Paradise Papers, specifically as a client of Appleby, which provided “offshore corporate services” such as legal and accountancy work. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative media outlets, leaked Appleby documents revealed, among other things, “the ties between Russia and [Trump’s] billionaire commerce secretary, the secret dealings of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief fundraiser and the offshore interests of the Queen of England and more than 120 politicians around the world.”

This would not appear to be the Bibby group’s only link to the shady world of offshore finance. Michael Bibby pops up as a treasurer for two shell companies registered in Panama, Minimar Transport S.A. and Vista Equities Inc.

Looking Forward

Much about the Bibby Stockholm saga remains to be seen. The exact cost of the initiative and who will be providing security services on board, are open questions. What’s clear however is that activists will continue to oppose the plans, with efforts to prevent the vessel sailing from Falmouth to its final docking in Portland scheduled to take place on 30th June.

Call to action from Cornwall Resists

Appendix: Company Addresses

HQ and general inquiries: 3rd Floor Walker House, Exchange Flags, Liverpool, United Kingdom, L2 3YL

Tel: +44 (0) 151 708 8000

Other offices, as of 2021:

6, Shenton Way, #18-08A Oue Downtown 068809, Singapore

1/1, The Exchange Building, 142 St. Vincent Street, Glasgow, G2 5LA, United Kingdom

4th Floor Heather House, Heather Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18, Ireland

Unit 2302, 23/F Jubilee Centre, 18 Fenwick Street, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Unit 508, Fifth Floor, Metropolis Mall, MG Road, Gurugram, Haryana, 122002 India

Suite 7E, Level 7, Menara Ansar, 65 Jalan Trus, 8000 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

160 Avenue Jean Jaures, CS 90404, 69364 Lyon Cedex, France

Prievozská 4D, Block E, 13th Floor, Bratislava 821 09, Slovak Republic

Hlinky 118, Brno, 603 00, Czech Republic

Laan Van Diepenvoorde 5, 5582 LA, Waalre, Netherlands

Hansaallee 249, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany

Poland Eurocentrum, Al. Jerozolimskie 134, 02-305 Warsaw, Poland

1/2 Atarbekova str, 350062, Krasnodar, Krasnodar

1 St Peter’s Square, Manchester, M2 3AE, United Kingdom

25 Adeyemo Alakija Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria

10 Anson Road, #09-17 International Plaza, 079903 Singapore

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The Civil Fleet is a UK-based blog and podcast that focuses on activist-led refugee rescue and support missions in the Mediterranean and across Fortress Europe. For show notes and more Civil Fleet podcasts see here. The blog can be found here.

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With a permanent deployment of approximately 150 police on the hill reported for the past half year, the atmosphere is intimidating, to say the least. Since August 2022 up until the time of writing, the assembly to defend the hill has reported constant harassment of those trying to use the park, including of kids coming to play basketball or simply hang out. It has counted over forty arrests in that time, as well as other acts of violence and tear gas used against local residents who refuse to back down in the face of state intimidation. Yet the assembly has sustained resistance in myriad forms – from demos, to intergenerational festivities with traditional dancing and choirs.

Strefi Hill is more than just an inner city park. It’s a precious gathering space at the heart of a spirited neighbourhood that successive governments have sought – but failed – to subdue and assimilate. It’s a haven for anarchists, refugees and other outsiders to organise or socialise, but also a valuable community space with an open theatre, basketball courts and a playground.

And it’s a refuge for wildlife too. Wild tortoises live on the hill, and the animal has become its symbol: ancient, free, and vulnerable – but ultimately tough in its weather-beaten shell.

Since our interview, we’ve dug into the companies carving up this precious space for personal gain, hoping to inspire solidarity. We traced the financial interests back to faceless private equity firms in Northern Europe and the US – and found some wealthy Greek dynasties along the way.

Mural for Strefi Hill. Image: Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill

The investors: PRODEA

Parent companies: Invel & Castlelake

€1m (£850k) in financing for the Strefi project is provided by Prodea, with €800,000 (£687k) supplied by Athens city council.

Prodea is a property developer listed on the Athens stock exchange. Its owner describes it as “the largest Real Estate Investment Company (“REIC”) in Greece in terms of assets”, and it has at least fifty subsidiaries – mostly based in Greece and Cyprus.

The majority of Prodea’s investments are in commercial property in the form of offices. Over a third of its portfolio is rented out to the National Bank of Greece, while 10% is leased to the Greek supermarket chain Sklavenitis. It is currently in discussions about participation in the controversial Elliniko megaproject on the site of Athens’ former airport, among the world’s biggest urban redevelopment schemes.

According to company accounts, the firm appears to be doing well financially. It made just over €98m (£84m) in profit in 2022, although this was a significant drop from the previous year’s profits of around €128m (£110m).

Prodea’s chairman and president is Christophoros “Chris” Papachristophorou, who is also managing partner of the parent company, Invel. Educated at the London School of Economics, Papachristophorou cut his teeth in the world of property as global head of RREEF Opportunistic Investments, a real estate investment manager then owned by Deutsche Bank. Several other former RREEF and Deutsche Bank real estate personnel populate the Invel and Prodea management teams. This includes Papachristophorou’s wife Marianna, a London Business School graduate who owns a £5m home in Chelsea.

In an indication of the company’s potential proximity to government, another Deutsche Bank alumni and recent Invel Partner, Alexis Pipilis, happens to be Facebook friends with Sofia Mitsotakis – daughter of the current Greek Prime Minister.

Chris Papachristophorou

Invel

Prodea is owned by Invel, a Jersey-headquartered, multinational property investor and asset manager. The company specialises in “real estate and distressed debt opportunities across Europe”. It invites investment firms to contribute money alongside its own in the purchase of properties that are not considered to be profitable enough, and redevelops them.

However, Invel’s most high-profile investment isn’t a luxury hotel or a chain of supermarkets – it’s the property division of the National Bank of Greece (NBG).

Back in the early 2010s, the institutional response to the Greek debt crisis was to provide loans on the condition of massive structural changes, such as the privatisation of public assets and the implementation of austerity measures. Consequently, the real estate subsidiary of the bailed-out National Bank of Greece, then known as Pangaea, was sold off to a consortium led by Invel—a company that had been in existence for less than a year.

And Invel got a bargain. It purchased a majority share for just €653m (£566m) – however €450m was paid for by a loan provided by the bank itself (at just 2.75% interest), meaning Invel only actually paid €203m (£174m) at the time. The deal initially gave Invel access to nearly €1bn in 252 properties; as the country emerged from the worst days of the crisis, the value has since multiplied to nearly €3bn (£2.6bn) euros in 380 properties. It acquired the remaining stake in the Pangaea in 2019, renaming the business Prodea.

The Steinmetz Connection

Crisis profiteering isn’t the only unsavoury aspect of Invel’s story. It would probably like to distance itself from its most inconvenient bedfellow, disgraced diamond merchant and Israel’s former richest citizen, Beny Steinmetz.

Beny Steinmetz launched Invel back in 2013 with $400m (£343m) start-up capital provided via his firm, BSG Real Estate, part of the convoluted Beny Steinmetz Group (BSG) business empire which spans minerals, fossil fuels, property and private equity. He hired Papachristophorou as Invel’s “man on the ground” in Greece and Cyprus, and was partner at the firm until his legal woes mounted five years later. Papachristophorou remains CEO of another company in that empire, BSG Resources.

In 2020, Steinmetz was convicted of “the creation of an organized criminal group” by a Romanian court, in a case concerning the bribery of public officials for access to real estate. He was sentenced to five years’ prison in absentia.

Beny Steinmetz

A year later, Steinmetz was convicted of bribery again – this time in a case involving tens of millions of dollars worth of payments to the wife of Guinea’s then dictator, Lansana Conté, in return for mining rights. The site concerned is one of the world’s largest known deposits of iron ore in Guinea’s Simandou mountain range, home to critically endangered Western chimpanzees. In 2008, Rio Tinto – which had been given exclusive rights to the mine (and still enjoys concessions in the project) – had its license revoked. Permits were instead granted to BSG Resources, a company with no history of iron ore mining.

Steinmetz and his associates spent years trying to shut down the story through aggressive PR and legal tactics, as well as (not having quite caught on the first time) further bribery attempts.

Then in May 2022, a World Bank arbitration panel ruled that the mining rights had indeed been obtained through bribery. Yet in spite of having been sentenced to a total of ten years in prison by courts in two jurisdictions, Steinmetz appears to be walking free while he appeals his second conviction.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described Steinmetz as “the last guy you would want as an enemy”, and it no doubt helps to have family with access to power; his nephew was a partner in Jared Kushner’s property business, Kushner Companies. Steinmetz enjoys such a privileged relationship with Greece that despite the mounting evidence of corruption, a court in Athens rejected a Romanian extradition request in April 2022. He said he was “grateful to Greek justice” for this intervention.

A second figure who has been embroiled in the scandal is Shimon Menahem, another of Steinmetz’s nephews (in this case, by marriage), who invested heavily in Invel. In 2014, a Greek financial regulator noted that Papachristophorou and Menahem jointly controlled numerous companies, including exercising indirect joint control of at least one of Invel’s entities.

This map provides only a snapshot of Steinmetz’ nebulous corporate network, and many of his firms – as well as Invel’s extraordinary list of companies – are based in the tax havens Jersey, Guernsey and Luxembourg. Capitalism thrives on ambiguous corporate structures, and Steinmetz’ ability to evade the criminal justice system so far is testament to that.

Castlelake steps in

Following Steinmetz’s fall from grace, global investment firm Castlelake L.P. came to the rescue, acquiring significant shares in several Invel firms. Castlelake is now therefore the ultimate owner of Prodea, while Invel’s role in the relationship is that of a shell company – basically, a vehicle to run Prodea.

Castlelake is a multinational private equity firm specialising in planes and property. Although based in the US, the firm manages $20bn (£17bn) in assets through various funds – most of which are invested in Europe, according to financial databases.

It is headed by the founders, Rory O’Neill and Evan Carruthers. Both of them previously worked at the agribusiness conglomerate – and world’s largest private company – Cargill.

Evan Carruthers, Castlelake Co-CEO

Rory O’Neill, Castlelake Co-CEO

Engineers: Aktor

Parent company: Ellaktor

The engineering work on the hill is being carried out by Aktor. According to members of the assembly, this is being done via TOMI AVETE, an Aktor subsidiary specialising in urban developments.

Aktor is owned by Ellaktor, a major Greek construction and engineering conglomerate which operates in over thirty countries, notably in Eastern Europe and the Gulf. It works in construction, quarrying and property development, as well as building and running wind farms and wastewater treatment plants. The Group as a whole has benefited significantly from prominent public-private development projects for decades. It was, until a few years ago, led by two warring families, the Kallitsantsis clan, and the powerful Bobolas dynasty – which also owned controlling stakes in leading Greek media outlets. It is now headed by banker and private equity trader, Efthymios Bouloutas, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2018 associated with (mis)management of the now-defunct Laiki Bank. He evaded prison, walking away with a small fine.

Ellaktor has been called Greece’s second-largest producer of wind energy, running a dozen or so such farms, and now branching out into offshore wind power. Wind energy has been particularly controversial in Greece over the past couple of years, with deregulation resulting in farms being plonked on mountain tops in ecologically-sensitive habitats, and communities mobilising against the developments. Aktor also had a 5% stake in the gold mine at Skouries, Northern Greece, until this was bought by Eldorado Gold in 2020. Locals and supporters have mounted a decades-long, historic campaign of resistance to the ecologically-disastrous plan, and the mine is still not yet in production.

Efthymios Bouloutas, Ellaktor CEO

Returning to the present day, Aktor is one of several companies implicated in February’s catastrophic train collision near Tempe, Greece’s deadliest rail disaster. In 2014, Aktor was awarded the contract to upgrade the signalling system on approximately 500km of the Athens-Thessaloniki line, in a joint venture with French rail giant Alstom. But a recent report by Reporters United and Investigate Europe found that the two companies repeatedly failed to carry out their duties, and instead spent years bickering and demanding a larger contract. This was eventually approved in 2021 for an extra €13m (£11m). However, despite having been given more money, the companies were apparently still unable to get along. This led to Aktor subcontracting everything to Alstom, which had begun the work by the time of the crash.

Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis has attributed the disaster, which killed at least 57 people, to “tragic human error”; industry experts have said that an adequate signalling system would have prevented the accident from happening.

Neither trains nor joint ventures seem to be the company’s forte. Aktor was part of another joint venture that was awarded a multi-billion euro contract to extend the Doha metro. The consortium become embroiled in a dispute with a subcontractor, which took it to court resulting in a $98.5m (£79m) fine. Aktor had to pay a substantial share of the damages.

Despite its record, Ellaktor has bid to lead the consortium that would run the new Thessaloniki metro, once completed. It has been involved in the construction of the network, although the work has been hampered by delays for years, and the company again ran into dispute with a contractor.

Protracted construction projects have resulted in a significant backlog and debt for Aktor, and it made losses of €155.5m (£133m) in 2020. Despite it being the Group’s largest company, it is now being sold off to major competitor Intrakat for €100m, in a deal expected to be completed before the end of the year.

Today, Dutch private equity firm Reggeborgh is Ellaktor’s largest shareholder, with a total stake of approximately 45%. Until recently, it also had a large shareholding in another major Greek construction firm, GEK Terna. Reggeborgh has been described as the investment vehicle of the Dutch Wessels family, which is behind the conglomerate VolkerWessels.

The next largest shareholder (with roughly 30%) is Motor Oil, a Greek petrochemicals firm chaired by billionaire shipping tycoon Vardis Vardinogiannis.

Police on Strefi Hill. Image: Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill

The managers: UNISON

Parent company: ISS

According to the Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill, the installation of the CCTV cameras, tree-cutting, fencing, concreting and cleaning has been contracted to a Greek firm called Unison.

Unison describes itself as Greece’s “market leader in the facility management industry”. Set up in the late seventies as ISS Group Hellas, it was rebranded in 2021.

Unison carries out much of the same work as its parent company, the global outsourcing giant ISS. It also has a human resources subsidiary specialising in temping work, and says that it is the first company in Greece to have received a temping license.

ISS

Danish outsourcer ISS has its roots in the security business in the early 20th century, before it branched out into cleaning, catering, site and equipment maintenance. It is now a facilities management multinational, smaller than the behemoths Sodexho and Compass Group, but larger than the British outsourcing firm Mitie. It is led by CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen, an investment banker.

Unison represents particularly marginal revenues for ISS, at less than 1% – and isn’t even included in ISS’s list of significant subsidiaries. ISS’s most important market is the UK, where the majority (15%) of its global income is generated. It is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

ISS is a publicly-traded company. Kirkbi A/S, a private holding of the Danish Kirk Kristiansen family (owner of the world’s most profitable toy company, Lego), has a 17% shareholding in the business.

British-based private equity firm Longview Partners has a smaller (7%) shareholding. Ownership of Longview can be traced back to Ernesto Bertarelli, Swiss billionaire and until recently, Switzerland’s richest person. Bertarelli recently bought a £92m home in Belgravia, London using wealth which ultimately derives from his family’s former pharmaceutical business.

Conclusion

Tugging on the threads of Strefi Hill unravels a patchwork of companies and individuals united in self-interest and corporate greed, from faceless US investors and a corrupt Israeli diamond merchant, to an LSE-educated banker and a Swiss billionaire. The cases of Aktor and Steinmetz show how proximity to power means they can keep getting the contracts, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they may be.

These corporate interests can be traced far beyond Athens, with wealth being funnelled back to countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark and the US. The attack on the hill is part of a global struggle against the suppression of dissent, alternative lifestyles and free public spaces. But with collective resistance and solidarity, victory against the devastating forces of gentrification is within reach.

Click to enlarge

Appendix: Addresses

See the links for more locations

• Prodea

  Athens: Chrisospiliotissis 9, 105 60.

• InvelAthens: (same as Prodea) Chrisospiliotissis 9, 105 60.London: 1st Floor, 26 Grosvenor Gardens, London, SW1W 0GT.(See the link for more)

• Castlelake

  London: 15 Sackville Street, W1S 3DJ.

• Unison

  Athens: Andrea Siggrou 194, Kallithea 176 71.

• ISS

  UK: 1 Brooklands Drive Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0SL

• Ellaktor

  Athens: Ermou 25, Kifisia 145 64.

• Aktor: As Ellaktor

The post The corporate plunder of Strefi Hill appeared first on Corporate Watch.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below:

Transcript:

00:01 Tom

Hello, and welcome to episode two of the Corporate Watch podcast. My name’s Tom and this is our Eco-defence miniseries, which we recorded at the Earth First! gathering in the UK. This interview is with Katy and Merry from Biofuel Watch and the Stop Burning Trees Coalition. As with all these interviews, we recorded this outside in the midst of an ecological direct action gathering, you might be able to hear the wind or the noise of people chatting. We hope that this background noise isn’t too distracting, and allows you to hear the atmosphere of the gathering. We hope you’ve enjoyed listening to all the interviews in this mini-series. And that you check out our work at www.corporatewatch.org.

And now back to the gathering…

[Recording cuts to the interview at the Earth First! gathering]

Hey, so I’m here with Katy and Merry from Biofuel Watch and the Stop Burning Trees Coalition. Thanks a lot for talking to us. We’re here at the Earth First gathering on the Sunday. Could you tell us a bit about the organisations that you’re a part of and about the Coalition?

01:01 Katy

So Biofuel Watch works to campaign against the use of bio-energy. Focusing a lot at the moment on woody biomass. So [are] forests being used to create electricity, but also liquid biofuels from crops like corn and soy. And we campaign to highlight the issues for biodiversity and the climate, and [their] impacts on human health.

01:27 Merry

And the Stop Burning Trees Coalition is a fairly new coalition. That [began] around the time of Drax’s, one of the biggest biomass companies in the world, AGM with groups from across the north [of England] and the UK coming together for that. And since then, trying to organise a more grassroots campaign against biomass, but in particular, Drax because a lot of us are located in Yorkshire in the north, where Drax is a huge problem. And it’s right on our doorstep. So [we are] working quite closely with lots of different groups from trade unions and trade union councils to health campaigners, and environmental groups campaigning against biomass.

02:03 Tom

And you were talking a little bit in the workshop you did here about the Axe Drax campaign. Could you talk about that briefly?

02:08 Merry

Yeah, so Axe Drax as a group came about just before the first lockdown from people in Yorkshire again, wanting to take action against Drax. It’s done various different actions and protests and that sort of thing. And then it’s sort of moving more towards direct action, trying to cause more disruption and respond in a way that seems appropriate to the destruction that Drax is causing. So there’s been a few different actions that have happened with Axe Drax. There’s this train line, that’s a private railway that goes straight into Drax, which brings all the wood pellets from all the trees cut down abroad to be burnt.

‘Halt the felling’ Protesters stop a train carrying biofuel – via Axe Drax

There has been a couple of protesters who have disrupted that train line, just trying to bring attention to what Drax is doing, and the amount of harm it’s causing around the world. More recently, there was an action taken by Axe Drax on the day of Drax’s AGM – targeting the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), where they did some creative redecorating of the outside of BEIS bringing attention to the billions in subsidies that BEIS gives Drax that will come out of our energy bills. Drax currently is receiving £2.6 million a day in subsidies from BEIS, which is a horrible misuse of public money. And it’s meant to be going to actual renewables, but instead, it’s going [towards] destroying our forests and polluting our communities. So Axe Drax is a member of the coalition working again on a grassroots level to campaign against biomass, but with a particular focus on Drax because they’re so prevalent in the north.

London, UK. 27 April 2022. A protestor from Axe Drax sprays paint to the outside of the entrance to BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy)

03:32 Tom

And for people who aren’t so familiar with biomass – and some of the issues you’ve talked about here – could you explain a bit more about what the campaign is about?

03:40 Katy

Yeah, so focusing specifically on Drax as that’s our main focus and [it’s] the biggest biomass burner in the UK. So, Drax is currently in receipt of £2.6 million [a day] in subsidies, which comes from BEIS from a surcharge on energy bills – as Merry’s explained – and they get that money because biomass or wood burning, which is how Drax now generates electricity after transitioning from coal is currently classed as renewable. And it’s also classed as carbon neutral under carbon accounting rules. In reality, Drax is the single biggest carbon emitter in the UK. And burning wood actually releases more CO2 for the amount of energy produced than coal does. So that’s also the first lie that is told – that burning wood is carbon neutral. We’re also told that it’s sustainable, and Drax will claim that the wood it uses to make pellets comes from waste wood [and] sawmill residues. But the reality is that the demand for wood from the biomass industry – particularly Drax – is driving forest destruction around the world. The wood that is burnt in Drax comes from overseas. 60% comes from the southern US, [and] the remainder comes from Canada and the Baltic states: Estonia and Latvia.

And in Estonia, there is evidence of Drax sourcing wood illegally, from old-growth forests that are protected. But the majority of the wood that Drax burns is classed as sustainable under the UK sustainability criteria. But that’s because the bar is set so low that it basically means if it’s legal. And because forests aren’t classed as old growth unless they’re over 150 years old, they can use wood from 100-year-old forests and that’s classed as sustainable.

Truck loaded with logs on logging road – via Wikimedia Commons/University of British Columbia library

Investigators on the ground have filmed logging trucks [coming out] of forests that have been clearcut and filmed the logs getting taken to the pellet mills to be turned into wood pellets. So this idea that the wood is a byproduct of other forestry industries isn’t true. And one of the things that they would class as waste wood – they would class a tree that isn’t uniform. And so if the tree isn’t completely straight and can’t be used for, say house building… [but] obviously if you’re that tree, or you’re the animal that lives in that tree, [then] that’s not waste wood, it’s your home. And particularly in the southern US, there are environmental justice issues with the pellet mills being cited predominantly in – over 50% of them – in areas that are classed as ‘environmental justice communities’. So poor communities of colour and the health impacts from the pellet mills are horrendous – people suffer[from] cancer, heart disease, and asthma. They can’t put their washing out else it gets dust on it, dust all over their cars. This is impacting communities that are already suffering economic hardship. And there are now issues over here with Drax being in court [CW note, this case was ongoing as of August 2022], they’ve been taken to court by the Health and Safety Executive [in the UK] because the same health issues that are being created by the pellet mills are actually now taking their toll on the workers at Drax in terms of exposure to wood dust. And the pellets once they’ve been processed come over to the UK by ship, obviously there is pollution involved with shipping wood pellets for such long distances. And the pellets come through ports in the north of England, so Liverpool, Hull, Immingham and sometimes to Tyneside. And those have been focal points for action in the north [of England] taken by the Stop Burning Trees Coalition that we’ve set up.

Climate justice campaigners taking part in a demonstration at Leeds Magistrates Court today in support of health and safety charges against Drax Power Station – via Axe Drax

07.35 Tom

And we heard a little bit about how Drax is planning to make money from BECCS [Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage], would you like to explain what that is?

07.43 Katy

Yeah, so it gets worse. Because a lot of people aren’t aware of all the issues with biomass… It’s not sustainable and it’s not renewable and it’s not a climate solution. And so already kind of communicating this can be bursting people’s bubbles. But the next thing that Drax [is] trying to claim is – not just that burning wood is carbon neutral – but that by applying BECCS, which is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, they can make wood burning carbon negative. So a lot of people will be familiar with CCS – Carbon Capture and Storage – which the fossil fuel industry has been promising for years is going to make it viable to keep burning fossil fuels and not contributing to climate change because they’re going to capture the carbon and store it underground. So far, that’s only happened on a very limited scale. And [it’s been] incredibly expensive, and not viable as a climate solution, certainly not within the timescales that we’re talking about in terms of needing to reduce emissions. Drax now is claiming that they’re going to use this technology but with bioenergy [CW note – in fact Drax has submitted a proposal to try and do it] proposed to, and they’ll thereby store the carbon from the trees that they burn. And then in theory – by regrowing those trees – create a kind of cycle where they are sucking carbon out of the atmosphere.

One, it’s a completely unproven technology. And at the moment, it’s at very initial stages of technology development. So again, just not at all within the timeframes that we need to be addressing climate change. And then, very worryingly, governments are accepting that this is a technology that works, and plugging it into climate projections and policies. And instead of addressing the need to reduce emissions now. They are saying that we’re going to get net zero by [2050], by being heavily reliant on BECCS technology that doesn’t work, and Drax knows is unlikely to work because the subsidy regime that they are asking for to implement this has the subsidies for capturing carbon, separate to the subsidies for continuing to burn wood – which they are keen to get. And the other thing that’s really important to highlight, is that the whole concept of it being renewable and sustainable is based on a false promise that if you replant trees, they will reabsorb carbon at the same rate as old trees. And that’s not true, increasingly, there’s evidence that old-growth forests, mature forests, are our biggest allies in climate change mitigation, because they’re the biggest absorbers of CO2 and saplings don’t absorb CO2 at the same rate. And so the timescales that we’re talking about for it to be renewable and sustainable – again – they’re not in line with the urgency of needing to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.

10.44 Merry

Yeah, so the research shows that it takes about 44 to 104 years to reabsorb the carbon emitted from burning these trees, which is obviously, way, way longer than we have in all the other different estimations of how urgently we need to cut carbon. And it also doesn’t take into account all the biodiversity, the fact that these forests act as vital flood defences for these communities, again, often ‘environmental justice communities’. And also all the biodiversity and the rare and protected species that exist in these forests. So it’s on far too long a timescale for it to have any real impact on us hitting the tipping points, and harming the planet even more, not to mention all the other impacts that come alongside it.

11.22 Tom

So it’s an unproven technology. And you’ve said lots of reasons why it’s it’s not an adequate way or even a real way of addressing climate change. So what’s in it for the government subsidising these projects? And what’s in it for Drax? Why is it being done?

11.37 Merry

Drax Power Station from West Hill, High Hunsley, by Nick Theasby for Geograph Britain and Ireland

I mean you look at [what’s going on] and you think, obviously, this shouldn’t exist when you think about it. But there’s a lot of money in it. So, in 2009, when the EU declared that biomass was a form of renewable energy, there were subsidies given out to coal power plants to transform [them] into biomass energy plants. So Drax – having been a huge coal power plant – saw this opportunity to keep going, and to keep making money. It took the subsidies and started transitioning. Since then they’ve been receiving billions in subsidies. By 2027, they’ll have received about £10 billion in renewable energy subsidies to keep burning our forests. There’s a very close relationship between Drax and the government. In the last year or so there were about 70 meetings between DRAX and BEIS [CW note – it was actually 32 meetings with Kwasi Kwarteng after he joined BEIS in 2019, and a total of 69 meetings with ministers since 2020. These figures are from Biofuel Watch’s own research]. Whereas it took the same amount of time for MPs who are resisting biomass to have one meeting with BEIS. So there’s a very clear, close relationship. And you have people who used to sit on Drax’s board, [and] also on the climate change commission designing the government’s net-zero strategy, which funnily enough features BECCS very heavily. And also, I think, because it was something they could already do, they could transition these existing power plants into biomass plants, they can then count that as part of their renewable energy and say: ‘Look, we’re meeting our targets! We’re producing this much renewable energy because Drax is burning trees’, and therefore it counts as renewable energy, and there’s very close relationships between lots of government officials and MPs and Drax. The local Selby MP, Nigel Adams – which is where Drax is located just near Selby – has received tens of thousands in donations from Drax [CW note – also fellow Biomass firm Eggsborough], and then has also gone on to lead biomass working groups in Parliament and push biomass very heavily. So there’s all these lobbying relationships, and there’s money to be made that’s coming out of our energy bills that should be going to genuine renewables.

13.19 Katy

I think as well, it’s really expedient for the government that they can just look at BECCS and say, ‘Oh, great, we don’t really need to change anything. We don’t need to ask people to change their lifestyles’. ‘We don’t need to decentralise the electricity grid’, you know, ‘we can keep the base loads there using Drax and not invest into the sorts of battery technologies that we need to transition to more sustainable, genuine renewable technologies such as wind and solar’, which are now… the costs of those have massively come down. And whereas Drax is taking money from people’s energy bills through this levy, wind and solar are now paying back. My view is the government doesn’t want our energy systems here to become too decentralised, because it’s a way of controlling people and having power over people if you have that very centralised grid. But also it means we don’t have to really address the actual situation we’re in, which is that we need to start limiting economic growth. We need to look at our economic model, which is constant extraction of resources to make profit for companies. And by relying on these pie in the sky technologies, we can just keep going with business as usual. And ultimately, it’s a way of them trying to appear to be addressing the climate crisis, but within capitalism. Ultimately it can’t work, because we need to start addressing consumption and resource use in terms of economic resources and extraction and looking at different sorts of economies that are sustainable. But governments don’t want to make those changes because they want to keep making money, and their mates being able to make money.

15.17 Merry

Fundamentally, it’s another form of so-called green capitalism that doesn’t require addressing – as Katy was saying – the root causes of any of these issues, and we can continue [to] export – as England has done for a very, very long time – the harm to other countries, to communities that are already marginalised and harmed by different polluting industries. We can cut down forests abroad, pollute those communities, and then the UK can continue acting as it always has done by harming other communities, continuing these economic systems, these systems of profit, and these very close relationships between all these people in power so that nothing ever really has to change. And I think it fundamentally comes down to that. It’s just green capitalism and greenwashing so that they can continue making money and harming everyone else.

16.14 Tom

And can you tell us a bit more about campaigning around this issue, about the Stop Burning Trees Coalition and maybe some highlights or inspiring things that have happened during your campaign?

16.47 Katy

The AGM was a particular highlight because we had Axe Drax’s amazing action outside BEIS coinciding with a very, very noisy demo outside Drax’s AGM in London. And then there were a range of actions across the north along the train line routes, like Hull, and Liverpool [which] are both ports where pellets come in, and then Leeds and York close to Drax. We had very colourful, visually exciting actions. And we’ve also been challenging Drax’s greenwash successfully.

19.24 Merry

I think one of the really amazing things about the coalition is building these connections between people who are campaigning on different issues, whether it’s [highlighting] the health impacts [of Drax’s business] or working with trade unions and that sort of thing. One of the things that Drax does incredibly well and pours a lot of money into is greenwashing on a local level. So they have very close relationships with schools and universities in the north. And just recently, they were sponsoring this thing called the York Nature Fair, where there were lots of really lovely organisations coming together to educate people more about nature and biodiversity. Drax was the main sponsor of that and had their branding on everything, Propagating this image that they are this lovely, friendly company. So the coalition obviously noticed this and weren’t too thrilled about it, and contacted a lot of the different organisations involved. And they ended up dropping Drax from all their branding and the sponsorship and reassessing their own relationship with Drax because a lot of these organisations – without doing like a lot of their own research into biomass – it can be very easy to say, yeah, that seems fine. It’s classified as renewable. So I think that was a really wonderful thing that happened, just like very quickly and from all these different groups coming together and just educating more people about biomass.

And at the moment, the coalition is working quite heavily on looking at things like a just transition for workers, because Drax is a huge employer in the north. And you can’t deny that people rely on these jobs. And it’s a very big employer. So we’re building up more connections in the local area is something we’ve been putting energy into. Drax workers are currently [as of September 2022] doing wildcat strikes every two weeks, and people from the coalition go down to support those there’s sort of been this veil lifted on the working conditions within Drax because whenever you speak to someone who used to work for Drax they have nothing good to say about them, like really just genuinely awful stuff. But then when people are still working there, it’s hard to speak out. But then you’re hearing people are working in 50-degree conditions every single day and being paid very poorly and all these things. So what we’re trying to do with our work with the trade unions in the coalition is looking at how we could actually transition away from Drax in the north, and how those people could be supported and have genuinely green jobs and not actually be harmed by the shutting down of Drax. Because there’s such a diversity of groups within the coalition, it allows us to have this real diversity of tactics. You’ve got Axe Drax doing more direct action, more disruptive things, and then people working very closely with trade unions and local campaigning groups in the Selby area, and doing these sort of more theatrical, very colourful protests and stuff like that, or just like outreach and talking to more and more people about it, because even in the north, not many people really know what Drax is doing. So yeah, it allows us to have a really wide range of tactics and [a broad] campaigning strategy, which I think is really beautiful and really wonderful.

19.32 Tom

I was wondering if you could tell me a little about the relationship between Drax and a Canadian company called Pinnacle Pellets.

20.41 Merry

Yes, so Pinnacle Pellets is a Canadian logging company. They’ve previously been accused of – or known – for logging on unceded indigenous land in Canada home to over 600 indigenous communities with lots of biodiversity and protected species. Last year, Drax purchased Pinnacle Pellets, because they’re expanding into the pellet production business – not happy with just burning everything. They’re also trying to, you know, cut down the trees and turn them into pellets, they’re now the world’s second-biggest pellet producer. So this is all happening in Canada, which is where they’ve been increasingly sourcing wood from. And another part of that is the Head of Forestry in that province [Diana Nicholls], who was deciding which companies could log where has now recently [joined] Drax’s board. And there’s a very clear connection between them. Part of this as well is because Drax has expanded so much in this part of Canada in the logging business, the unions and the workers who have been working in the forestry business have actually published open letters to Drax, basically saying that their huge expansion in that area is putting them out of work and taking jobs away from all the people that been working there for a very long time. And it’s just another example of how Drax is trying to expand and trying to grow its business into cutting down and burning more and more trees around the world and harming communities as it goes.

20.50 Tom

And you were saying that the campaign back in the UK has been going after the financiers of Drax. Could you say a bit more about that?

22.07 Katy

We’ve been focusing recently on Barclays in particular, which is one of Drax’s biggest financiers. They’ve come under fire from fossil fuel campaigners because of their investments in fossil fuels. And they’re trying to greenwash their way out of that by saying that they are investing in renewable energy as well. But one of the big things that they are investing in is Drax. So we’re really trying to expose that burning fossil fuels and burning trees amount to the same thing. And Barclays is complicit in both. We recently had a very noisy and lively day at the Barclays AGM in Manchester with people inside disrupting the AGM and causing it to be delayed for quite a long amount of time. And then lots of campaigners outside campaigning on fossil fuels, and biomass burning a really lively, noisy demo. Also, there was some subvertising campaigns with spoof adverts exposing Barclays’ bad practices. We had an E-Action as well calling on Barclays to drop Drax, just to let people know that big biomass is not a climate solution, and the banks need to drop that as well as dropping fossil fuel investments.

22.16 Tom

And are there any moments in the campaign, or any aspects of the campaign that you think comrades can take inspiration from, or learn from?

23.07 Merry

I think so. The Coalition is very new. It only came out of the AGM in April [2022], and it sort of just sprung up from people who had been organising against Drax coming together to realise that we can unite all these groups and that by working together, we’re much stronger. And there’s a lot of expertise, and skills and energy from all these different groups around the north of the UK, coming together to campaign against Drax, I think we’re still in our very early stages. So we’re still learning as we go as well. But seeing the power of having different health campaigners and trade unions, environmentalists, and people working on a just transition coming together to campaign makes us so much stronger. If we can unite and see all the different connections between these issues, and how all these different aspects of capitalism and colonial capitalism come together, and feed into one another. Understanding how that all functions together, makes us much stronger, and makes resisting it much better.

Protest at Drax, via Axe Drax

23.12 Tom

And finally, how can people get involved in the campaign and support you?

23.52 Katy

If people want to find out more about Biofuel Watch, we’ve got loads and loads of really useful information on our website, which is biofuelwatch.org.uk. And also you can sign up to our newsletter and get updates for online actions. You don’t get too many emails. [The mailing list is designed to inform] how you can take action on biomass and how you can learn more. Also, we’ll support you if you want to organise a local screening of a film called ‘Burned: Are trees the new coal?’ Which we absolutely recommend you watch and analyse to learn more about biomass and then try and show it to other people.

24.26 Merry

If you want to get involved in the Coalition, you can sign up for updates on our website as well stopburningtrees.org. Or you can find us on social media: SBT Coalition. We hold regular welcome meetings, and we’re holding different actions over the coming months, which hopefully you’ll see. And if you’d like to get involved, you can contact us. All of our actions, events, and that sort of thing will be on the website and on social media. So you can find us that way. Come to our welcome meetings and if your group would like to sign up, or you would like to join, [you’re] very welcome. And we can give you as much information as you’d like and support you in taking any sort of action you want against biomass.

24.37 Tom

Oh, thanks very much. And we’ll put all those links and everything in the notes for the show. And thanks so much for your time. And I hope you enjoy the rest of Earth First!

24.48 Merry

So you can also join Axe Drax, you can find us on our website, which is axedrax.uk or on social media: axe_drax. And if you want to do direct action, that sort of thing, we’d love to have you there.

Music by Oz Lockley

The featured image is of Drax Power Station, taken by Richard Brownbridge, CC BY-SA 2.0

The post Eco-defence podcast episode two – an interview with Biofuel Watch appeared first on Corporate Watch.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below:

TRANSCRIPT:

00:01 Tom – Corporate Watch

Hello and welcome to the Corporate Watch podcast. My name’s Tom, and I’d like to welcome you to this first episode in our eco-defence miniseries of interviews that we gathered at the UK’s Earth First! Gathering. Featuring interviews with comrades involved in campaigning against the ecological destruction that’s caused by corporate greed.

But before we start, here’s a word about us:

Corporate Watch is a research group that helps people stand up against corporations and capitalism. We investigate exploitative bosses, landlords and property developers, companies profiting from prisons, profiting from deportation flights, from animal exploitation and more, as well as the mega-corporations devastating our planet – and the wider systems of power and profit they work within.

At the heart of everything we do is our idea of “information for action”. We know that people can fight and win, even against powerful enemies like corporations and governments. Good information helps to understand the forces we’re up against, spot their weaknesses, and so campaign effectively.

This is our first venture into the world of podcasts – so we apologise if things aren’t as polished as they could be. Because of this, it’s also taken us a good while to get these interviews ready for broadcast, so we’ve provided updates to the original interviews where that’s proved necessary. This interview – for example – includes an update on the situation as of March 2023.

All of these interviews were recorded outside, in the midst of an ecological direct action gathering – and you might hear the noises of people preparing the dinner, or shouting for the next workshop, and so on. We hope that all this adds a sense of atmosphere to the interviews.

Okay, so without further ado, here’s our first interview of the series.

[cut to the interview from the Earth First! gathering]

01.39 Tom – Corporate Watch

Okay, so I’m here with Daniel and Anne from Coal Action Network. And [the] first question I was gonna ask is about the Coal Action Network campaign, about how long it’s been going on for and what the aims of the campaign are?

An opencast coal mine in South Lanarkshire

01.50 Anne – Coal Action Network

So Coal Action Network started around 2008. It came out of an Earth First! gathering because at the time, there [were] around 45 new open cast coal mine applications proposed, and a similar number of operating open cast in the UK. So it was a big issue. The amount of carbon that’s released by the burning of the coal from the mines is significant, but also the environmental devastation on a local environmental level, when everything over the coal is destroyed. So all of the habitats, [and] the biodiversity is taken away. The very bedrock is taken away right down to the coal itself. And this has a huge impact on local communities and the local communities were… very isolated in their own fights. And they felt like it was only them – only their village – that was affected. And so, the Coal Action Network was formed, originally under a different name. It was formed in order to unite the groups together so that they could share their learning. And so that people could take direct action as well as working through the planning system.

02.46 Tom – Corporate Watch

Can you tell me a little bit about some of the successes of the direct action and the campaigns against coal over the years?

02.52 Anne – Coal Action Network

So over the years, we have fought a lot of campaigns, we didn’t end up fighting all 45, they weren’t necessarily necessary, but we stopped 22 open cast applications or extensions… 2020, was the kind of the end of that era – where we stopped: a new application at Druridge Bay, a new application at Dewley Hill and stopped an extension at Bradley in the Pont Valley. So that was a kind of accumulation of the work. But lots of people – community activists, environmental activists – over the years fought against these applications, through all sorts of different methods. Very much a holistic approach to fighting the campaigns. And in 2018, things kind of came together in the campaign to protect Pont Valley, where we had a big protest camp. That lasted, I think, for 54 days. We had the camp and then after that, there were further actions against the mine, sadly, the mine did happen. It did succeed. It had been rejected… by the local council in 2011. And then it had been approved at a second appeal. So it was like a really long drawn–out process, and the local community were really downtrodden because they felt like the mine was going to go ahead. And then we all came together for this really empowering, but sadly, ultimately unsuccessful campaign to stop the mine.

Demonstration at Bradley mine in the Pont Valley (photo via Glen Black)

But, in a way, it wasn’t unsuccessful, because the coal mining companies like to expand, because there isn’t [just] coal in a small pocket. They kind of keep eating up a whole valley and moving down the area. And because of the campaign to protect Pont Valley, and how successful that campaign was at making the headlines and keeping the issue in the news when they asked for an extension application, and to get even closer to people’s houses, they were rejected. So that was a big turning point for us.

But there were a lot of other camps prior to that. In Scotland, there were Coal Action Scotland camps, there was a camp in Huntington Lane [in Shropshire], they were across the coalfields of the UK. And yeah, lots of different types of tactics kind of brought about that change, to see we’re very near to the end of open cast coal mining in the UK. There’s a couple of mines operating, and there’s one extension application, but it’s a very different picture to the one that we started with when we started Coal Action Network.

04:50 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And is there anything from that history of campaigning that really sticks out as like a really inspiring moment or a really inspiring action?

04:59 – Anne – Coal Action Network

via Coal Action network

There was an action in the Pont Valley that really inspired me, we went to the company that was building the access road to enable the coal mine. The access road had to be completed before the third of June, otherwise, the coal mine wouldn’t be able to start. So it was very clear for us that if we stopped the access road being built then we would stop the coal mine and we were successful in that. Sadly, the authorities didn’t care. But the action – what was inspiring for me about it – was that three non-binary people blocked the road. And the support involved quite a lot of local queer women who had never been part of anything like that. And just seeing those movements come together, and people fighting for the area where they lived and an area where they had just met and people coming together in a fantastic action where ultimately, the road building company built a new road out of its own compound [laughs]. You can’t predict everything that might happen. But we won that, we stopped them from building their access road in the time available. And then the authorities pushed through the mine despite that happening, but there were lots of successes along the way – even though we weren’t successful in stopping the valley… from being destroyed.

06:02 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And, what’s the situation now? You were saying that opencast is less of an issue for you now, can you explain that? And talk about what is going through the planning process in terms of new projects?

06.13 – Anne – Coal Action Network

So open cast has become much less of an issue because of the obvious environmental impact locally, whereas [for] deep mining the environmental impacts are less clear. But the global environmental impacts are much greater because there’s a much greater amount of coal that’s extracted. When the organisation started, we were fighting coal mines… which provided power for power stations, so for the electricity grid. Though, there was a point when the UK was using 40% of its electricity coming from coal and now it’s down to less than 3%. And so there’s been big changes in that, and the government has said it will phase out coal by 2024. However, when they say phase out coal what they mean is close the power stations, they don’t mean stop the mining. And coal is not only used in power stations it’s also used in steelworks – is the second biggest – or has now become the biggest consumer of coal and so, things have changed in that direction.

Scottish Coal site – aerial view

07:07 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And did you want to talk about the current projects that are going through the planning process and that are live at the moment?

07:13 – Daniel – Coal Action Network

So we do have a working open cast coal mine in South Wales called Ffos-y-Fran, that is due for closure on the sixth of September [2022] this year [but the mine has applied for an extension], so, at that point, there shouldn’t be any active opencast coal mining in the UK. We are looking at an extension for Glan Lash, also in South Wales, that is opencast – [they] currently don’t have a licence to operate but they are looking to extend a coal mine. There’s also a deep coal mine in South Wales called Aberpergwm, that is going to mine 42 million tonnes of coal, so it’s a large extension.

Coal Action Network has launched a judicial review against the decision for that extension to go ahead. And we’re likely to have the hearing for judicial review around January or February 2023. There’s also Whitehaven which is being widely publicised in West Cumbria, that is a deep coal mine that is awaiting a determination by the Secretary of State in October [2022]. And finally, there’s a coal mine that’s at a very early stage in the planning process on the Scottish/English border, in Dumfries and Galloway. I think what’s really critical about this is all of these coal mines are claiming to primarily mine coal to make steel. So the government cut off for 2024 for coal for power in the UK, [and] these applications will be completely unaffected by that target. Globally, the steel industry uses a billion tonnes of coal every year to produce 1.7 billion tonnes of steel, that process emits 11% of global greenhouse gases. If we don’t solve this we can’t get a handle on climate change. It’s a really key issue, and not enough people know about it. In the UK, these four coal mines cumulatively – that are going through the planning process at the moment – account for 140 million tonnes of coal, that will produce around 430 million tonnes of CO2.

We need to get active on steel, and we need to stop the steel industry from consuming the level of coal it currently does. In the UK. There are two main steelworks in the UK that consume huge quantities of coal. The largest of those is in Port Talbot. And it’s called Port Talbot steelworks, it’s owned by Tata Steel. The other one is British Steel in Scunthorpe. These account for the second and third highest sources of [CO2] single–site emissions in the UK.

09:46 – Tom – Corporate Watch

So could you tell me about the companies that are involved in these four projects?

09:52 – Daniel – Coal Action Network

So in Whitehaven, the company behind the coal mine is called West Cumbria Mining Limited, they are majority owned by a Singaporean investment company serving people in Australia and elsewhere. Aberpergwm is run by Energybuild Ltd. They bought the coal mine in 2004. And we suspect that they might sell the coal mine at some point in the future to another coal–operating company. And there’s Lochinvar which is owned by New Age Exploration Limited – rather dystopically named – and they run gold mines in New Zealand and Australia. And they, until recently. also owned a stake in a tungsten mine in Cornwall but sold that. And finally, Glan Lash is owned by Bryn Bach Coal Limited.

10:40 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And out of those four projects, which one do you think is likely to be a campaigning focus in the near future?

10:47 – Daniel – Coal Action Network

A demonstration in support of legal challenges to Whitehaven coal mine

So in the order that these coal mines are in the planning system, Lochinvar is the earliest and then Glan Lash which is currently awaiting a determination by Welsh Ministers. Whitehaven is awaiting a determination by the Secretary of State in October [2022] [update – this has now been approved, but is subject to a legal challenge]. So that’s coming up quite soon.

And Aberpergwm is a massive extension. We’re looking at a judicial review in January or February [2023] with an outcome from that several months later. We’re hoping to win. We’ve got a crack legal team and it’s looking optimistic. If we don’t win, there are no other options than direct action. And we really hope that people will come out and join us in taking direct action against that coal mine from happening.

Whitehaven – we’re expecting a decision on that very shortly. But there are other options that might be explored before direct action becomes the last option available to us.

11:49 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And how will people who want to support that direct action know, where should they look for information?

11:55 – Daniel – Coal Action Network

Coal Action Network, we share our information [through] our mailing list, which you can sign up for on our website. We put out information via Twitter and Facebook. I’m afraid we’re all a bit old to be putting information out on Instagram. But we would appreciate it – if you see that information – to share it amongst yourselves on Instagram. So keep your ears peeled and follow us on our socials and our mailing list, so you can find out news as it happens.

12:20 – Tom – Corporate Watch

Okay, and I wanted to ask – what do you think that the campaign… the struggle that you’ve had so far highlights about the links between the coal industry and corporate power and greed in general?

12:35 Anne – Coal Action Network

So there are lots of examples of how the coal industry links into corporate greed and how the state protects that. For example, when opencast coal mines start, they produce a lot of waste, what’s called overburden – everything that’s over the rock, and it costs millions of pounds to put that back. Coal companies don’t make any money whilst they’re putting that back. They’re supposed to put money to one side to pay for that later. However, often what these companies do is set up shell companies – subsidiaries. For example, Celtic Energy in South Wales escaped over £100 million pounds worth of restoration costs on four different sites, so Selar, Margam, East Pit, and Nant Helen.They created companies that were based in the Virgin Islands and gave them names that weren’t related to coal, weren’t related to the business… things like Ash Energy and Oak… and things like that. So subsidiaries that are basically meaningless.

UK coal did it as well. They also went for the plant theme and called it Juniper Number Three.

So they create these companies that then own the land, the land that is opencast – and the actual company behind the whole thing keeps operating the site, but the liability goes with the land. So planning permission goes with the land and who has to put it back goes with the land. If that company is then in the Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands abroad, then there’s no recourse for that to ensure that restoration happens.

Consequently, local communities who were promised to get their footpaths back, to have the water that fills in the void dealt with safely, to have woodland planted or whatever – kind of things that we know are bullshit remediation -those don’t happen. And so communities who’ve dealt with all of the dust, all of the noise, all of the loss of amenities, lose everything once the company has gone. In the case of Celtic [Energy], it went to involve the Serious Fraud Office and it involved a court. And the people high up in the companies had their premises raided, [and] they were arrested. And when it went to court, the judge said it was dishonest, it was wrong, but there [was] nothing they could do. It was legal. And that just shows that the state is set up – as we all know – to criminalise people who try and create a better world and a more sustainable world. It isn’t set up to penalise the people who have a lot of money, and who walk away having extracted from places, which have had the negative impacts of coal, and then none of the benefits – and so it’s just another example that we’re well aware of, of the way in which the state benefits and companies benefit, and local people don’t.

photo via Glen Black, from a protest in the Pont Valley

15.02 – Tom – Corporate Watch

And the last question I had was, out of all those years of struggle against the coal industry, what do you think the lessons are, that comrades that are involved in struggles against corporate power, can learn or take from the struggles that you’ve been involved in?

15.15 – Daniel, Coal Action Network

So in my experience, the things that we can see through the work that we’ve taken on coal, that are equally relevant in other contexts are that communities that resist coal mines or resist extractivist projects are much more successful when the community works together. If there’s like land being bought and things like that, the communities need to work in partnership with their neighbours. And that community groups that start up around the point where a planning application is expected, they are most strong and most likely to win if they fight on other issues in their local area.

So if they create positive events in their area, or they tackle other problems, that they have – other environmental problems that they have – they’re more likely to stay together as a cohesive group and then be able to re-invigorate themselves on the issue of coal, or whatever extractivism it is, at a later stage.

I would also say that it’s really important to break down the narratives of ‘activists’ and ‘local people’, I think, sometimes I fall into it myself! But that, that we’re all part of the same struggle, and that the struggles that can seem fairly single issue [do] inspire people and enable people to meet connections that they wouldn’t have otherwise met. And also that within direct action movements, it’s very easy to [think] that direct action is the most successful thing, but often the fairly dull dealing with the planning system can actually result in a secure victory. And that direct action is often necessary at the last point when we really don’t have anything else. And so it’s better if we can stop getting to that point because it’s [the] endgame. Whereas if we can stop it at planning, or you can stop it through other methods, then that’s better, it’s a bit more laborious, it’s a different sort of way of working, but it can give really useful results.

A tussle with security at Bradley (photo via Glen Black)

16.54 Daniel – Coal Action Network

I think I would just go into more detail on Margam, which was operated by Celtic Energy. And although Celtic Energy pulled a similar trick at all four of its coal mining sites, Celtic Energy particularly screwed over people living around Margam in Park Slip in South Wales. They lobbied the council planning board to give them an extension to the coal mine. And they said ‘we’ll use the money that we earn from this extension to pay for the restoration’. And the council who were looking at a huge liability if Celtic were to walk away, which they could because they’d sold the land already, they were held over a barrel. And so they said ‘yes, fine, you can have this extension. We just need to restore this massive void that you’ve dug out, to put the soil back’. Celtic Energy said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, we’ll do it’. At the end of that extension, the council came to Celtic Energy, [and] they said ‘right, great! It’s time for you to down tools, [and] restore the land. Keep your promise!’ Celtic were like, ‘yeah, we’ve not sold as much coal as we though we would. We need another extension’. At this point, the council said ‘no!’, ‘you’ve had enough, we’re not gonna do it any more’.

Unfortunately, only £5 million had been put to one side for restoration. £5 million might sound like a lot, [but] it’s a pittance to their amount that was required to just drain the water that was accumulating in the site… Because of that the council took Celtic Energy to court to pay for the restoration they’d promised to do. And over the course of that court process, the water had been filling into this coal mine, and just draining that water would cost over £10 million. So the council had no option than to just dig a bit of a ditch at the top of the coal mine that would drain the water away, so it will stop it from overflowing and flooding to the residences below. So these people now live with this massive void of water massive millions of cubic metres of water near to their homes, and they feel that threat.

And Celtic Energy said to the council, ‘you know, if you don’t accept this proposal, well, we’re gonna turn off our pumps [that] keep maintaining the water levels where they are, you’ve got a few months. So not only did the council accept this proposal, they paid Celtic Energy to do that – to dig this ditch. They paid them that last £5 million because Celtic Energy had their gear there, it would cost more to pay another company to come in. And that’s just such a galling example of company abuse of power, and abusing the legal system that our state creates. And ultimately, it’s the local communities that always pay the price. And there are so many communities still living beside unrestored or poorly restored sites around England, Wales and Scotland. We’ll be releasing a report [update – it’s now been released] shortly on the state of restoration of coal mining sites around South Wales. So keep your eyes peeled for that. We’ll be sending a mailing out to our mailing list and it’ll be on our website.

19:52 – Tom – Corporate Watch

Anne and Daniel, thanks so much and [I] like really encourage people to check out the website and go on the mailing list and be ready to take action when it’s needed. And, we’re gonna go and get some dinner pretty soon. But thank you so much for speaking to me.

Okay, so that interview was recorded in late August 2022. And some things have changed since then. So I asked Daniel for an update.

20.16 – Daniel – Coal Action Network

It’s March 2023. and much has changed. The Whitehaven coal mine has been approved by the Secretary of State in December 2022. Since then, local environmental group SLACC [South Lakes Action on Climate Change] and Friends of the Earth have both launched legal challenges against that approval. And we’re looking at other ways that we can challenge the Whitehaven coal mine from progressing.

Ffos-y-Fran did submit an extension application just five days ahead of the planning permission running out on the sixth of September 2022. But that extension application is still being considered by the local planning authority. In the meantime, though, all reports indicate that the coal mining company has not stopped coal mining at Ffos-y-Fran despite the fact that the planning permission has run out. We’ve done everything that we can to highlight this, and to report it to the local planning authority, but they’ve just sat on their hands. As far as we’re aware, they’ve not done any independent investigation of what would be a serious breach of planning permission at the site, they are due to formally consider and make a decision on the extension application in April. That’s almost six months of coal mining at the site without planning permission for six months, that’s terrible!

A demonstration outside the first day of the Aberpergwm judicial review hearing

At Glan Lash, that application for an extension is still alive. It is due to be considered by the local council of Carmarthenshire in three months from now. And we’ll be there to resist that.

In Scotland. slightly brighter news, the Scottish Government have announced a de facto ban on all forms of coal mining within Scotland, very similar to what they’ve done against fracking. We think that this means that the Lochinvar Coal Mine application is dead in the water.

And finally, at Aberpergwm, the deep coal mine in South Wales, that judicial review hearing is happening in a few days from now [cw note – it started on March 16th. A judgement is expected within three months]. So we’re very busy preparing for that, we’re optimistic that we’ll win. And that will save nearly 40 million tonnes of coal from being potentially extracted from that coal mine, and restore a bit of Welsh sovereignty around what happens in their future – ensuring that they can put into action, the strong anti-coal policies that they have.

Music by Oz Lockley

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