Norway's Top Court Invalidates Approvals Of Offshore Oil Fields In Landmark Climate Ruling

The Supreme Court of Norway has ruled that the Norwegian government’s approval of three offshore oil and gas fields in the North Sea was unlawful because the government failed to consider the full scope of the fields’ climate impact, including downstream emissions from combustion overseas.

The ruling, issued on November 13 from the court’s Grand Chamber, invalidates the permits for the Breidablikk, Yggdrasil, and Tyrving fields. Breidablikk and Tyrving, developed by oil companies Equinor and Aker BP, respectively, are already in production, and Aker BP’s Yggdrasil field is expected to start producing next year, according to Reuters reporting.

The court’s decision was based on what it said were “procedural errors” by the government, which must now reassess the permits. The decision itself does not require the fields to shut down. But environmental advocates celebrated the verdict as a landmark win for climate accountability.

“This historic ruling changes Norwegian oil policy forever, and sets a precedent the world cannot ignore,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, head of Greenpeace Nordic, one of the environmental groups that filed the lawsuit against Norway’s Energy Ministry. “Norway can no longer ignore the global damage caused when its oil and gas are burned abroad. Norwegian authorities are now obligated to take into account the enormous climate damage caused by Norwegian oil and gas.”

Helle called the court’s decision a “momentous victory for global climate justice.”

Greenpeace Nordic and Natur og Ungdom (Young Friends of the Earth Norway) sued the government in 2023, arguing that the approvals of the offshore oil fields violated Norwegian and EU law. The lawsuit built upon a previous legal challenge, initiated in 2016, to the government’s granting of new offshore oil licenses in the Barents Sea. That case, dubbed The People v. Arctic Oil, went all the way up to the Supreme Court and was ultimately unsuccessful. The second case, however, saw the environmental groups win at the Oslo District Court, and then again at the Borgarting Court of Appeal.  

The Supreme Court’s ruling upholds these lower court verdicts and marks the culmination of a ten-year-long legal battle.

According to a Greenpeace press release: “In October 2025, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires states to assess the climate impacts of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, including emissions generated outside their borders, before approving projects. This obligation applies to all Council of Europe members, giving the judgment far-reaching implications for fossil fuel approvals across Europe.”

The Norwegian Supreme Court’s decision affirms that the government must consider the full scope of a fossil fuel project’s greenhouse gas emissions – including combustion or “scope 3” emissions – in assessing environmental impacts. That aligns with rulings from other courts, in the UK and Australia for example, in climate cases challenging fossil fuel project approvals.

“Today’s ruling confirms a major trend in global environmental law: governments can no longer ignore the climate damage caused by the fossil fuel extraction projects they approve,” Fergus Green, associate professor at University College London, said in a statement. “By invalidating these approvals, Norway’s Supreme Court has joined courts from the UK to Australia in rejecting the longstanding position of fossil fuel-producing companies and governments that exported fossil fuels are someone else’s climate problem.”

Tessa Khan, executive director of the UK-based organization Uplift, said the Norwegian court’s “historic ruling” will “be noticed by decision-makers all over the world, including in the UK where the government will shortly decide whether to approve the huge Rosebank oil field.”

“As Europe’s largest petrostate is forced to account for its climate harms, and with El Nino looming large, it is a timely reminder to all governments that their obligation to protect the public from climate harms is not up for political discussion. It is a legal requirement,” Khan added.

In a statement, Norway’s Minister of Energy, Terje Aasland, said: “The ruling is important because it clarifies the requirements for the decision-making process in cases like these. The Ministry will, of course, follow these requirements in its new assessment.”

“The Supreme Court has made it very clear that this does not mean that activities at the three fields must stop, but that the Ministry of Energy must reassess its decisions,” Aasland added. “This means that emissions from an individual project must also be considered in the context of total emissions from the Norwegian continental shelf. This is new. This is the point on which the Court ruled against us, and which led to the decisions being declared invalid.”

The Minister said that “they need to study the ruling more closely before we can say more about how we will proceed.”

The Norwegian environmental groups may consider suing the oil companies next in order to stop production in the fields, Reuters reported.