Offshore Off Campus

Campaigns, Offshore Off Campus
Offshore Off Campus

On November 16th, 2022, researchers and students put on orange vests and helmets, and started digging through the center courtyard at the Danish Technical University (DTU). With shovels, they dug up the earth and laid out a mock ‘oil pipe’, with a sign that read: “Here oil pipes are being built by TotalEnergies in collaboration with DTU Offshore”.

The action was in partnership with the student group Divest DTU (divestdtu.dk). We were protesting over the fact that DTU had just signed a collaboration contract of approximately 1 trillion DKK, with oil and gas giant TotalEnergies. The oil industry is the main culprit in the climate catastrophe. TotalEnergies is the 3rd largest fossil company in the world, and has clearly shown that they will continue their oil sales, regardless of the imminent danger of climate collapse. DTU also hosts the DTU Offshore Centre, financed by Total and Noreco Oil. The centre is a research institute dedicated to find ways to extract more oil and gas from the North Sea. Its steering committee is made up almost entirely of oil industry representatives, with half of the seats occupied by TotalEnergies executives alone. Meanwhile, DTU continues doing business with TotalEnergies. The pipeline was meant as an image of the destruction of nature and people’s homes that the oil industry creates with oil pipelines such as Baltic Pipe in Denmark and EACOP in Africa.

The oil industry not only has a strong presence on Danish campuses. It also has great influence over Danish politics. Each year, the oil and gas lobby in Denmark - Dansk Offshore - holds a conference gathering fossil fuel executives and politicians from major Danish parties. On December 3rd, 2021, 3 scientists bought tickets for this conference, in order to remind those politicians that the IPCC, the UN Secretary General and even the International Energy Agency have said that continued investments in fossil fuels is a suicidal endeavor. Sadly, even though they paid the fee, the scientists were not allowed inside the conference. Instead, they held a poster session together with activists from the anti-fossil movement Collapse Total, outside the conference’s doors.

Selected media coverage