Oil reliance causes war

There’s a direct relationship between fossil fuels and the Russian war machine. Rosneft, one of Russia’s main petroleum companies, is reported to be one of the main suppliers of fuel to the Russian army. Rosneft also supplies petroleum to companies like BP. So every time Russian oil or gas are bought it’s not just contributing funds to the war chest, it may be keeping military machinery running. Rosneft and subsidiary company Rosneft-Aero and Transneft reportedly delivered fuel to the Russian Army before and during the invasion. [1] 

To stop this war we need a global divestment from, and an embargo on, Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible, as well as urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need.

The struggle over energy resources has been a conspicuous factor in many recent conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005. Greenpeace has spoken out about such conflicts in the past, especially during the last Iraq war. 

The 1990 Gulf war was largely a conflict about oil. The issues which provided Iraq with the pretext for its invasion of Kuwait were oil pricing policies and oil revenues. Though oil was not the sole reason for Iraq’s actions, it was a powerful motivator for swift action from the United States and its allies who moved quickly to protect its own and OECD countries’ access to important oil supplies. And the large-scale exploitation of oil by foreign companies operating in southern Sudan has increased human rights abuses there and has exacerbated the long-running conflict in Sudan, resulting in two million people dying and four million displaced since 1983, as well as recurring famine and epidemics.

According to research in 2021 by Greenpeace Italy, Greenpeace Spain and Greenpeace Germany, almost two-thirds of all EU military missions monitor and secure the production and transport of oil and gas to Europe. The governments of Italy, Spain and Germany have invested more than €4 billion to protect climate-damaging fossil fuels since 2018.