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Extinction Rebellion blocks entrance of the office of oil and gas lobby group IOGP

'They use their war profits, to make us all poorer.'

Monday 8 June, Brussels - From around 8h30 this morning, around 20 activists from Extinction Rebellion are blockading the office of the major fossil lobby group IOGP, transforming the entrance into a theatre 'to showcase what happens behind the curtains at this building: the lobby for endless fossil fuels and exorbitant profits, while our planet burns'.


The activists hung theatre curtains on the sliding doors, opening them to show a scene of wildfires behind them, while renaming the fossil lobby group of IOGP as the 'Inferno of Oil and Gas Producers'. They sat in front of the doors, turning away lobbyists arriving at their offices. [press spokesperson can update how the action will end]

The action comes at a moment where major oil and gas companies, like IOGP members TotalEnergies, BP and Shell, are making huge excess profits from high fossil energy prices caused by the war on Iran. During the first month of the US-Israeli war on Iran, the world's top 100 oil and gas producers banked more than 30 million dollars every hour in excess profit (1)(2).

Activist Sacha: ‘They use their war profits, to make us all poorer, and this system of exploitation has an address. It's here.'

He explains that 'parts of these war profits go to this address, to the Big Oil lobbyists of IOGP. So first, they make huge excess profits from our extortionate energy and fuel bills. Then, these corporations use this money to aggressively lobby our governments so that their excess corporate profits don't get taxed, but stay in the hands of the ultra-rich (3). We could use this money to pay for emergency financial support, cheap clean energy to the people, and a transition away from this energy system of high bills and a burning planet.

The action is part of a campaign from XR Brussels to ban the practice of fossil and ecocidal lobbying, similar to the ban on tobacco lobbying. Previous actions included blocking the entrance of the chemical industry lobby Cefic and actions agains the Bedex arm’s faire and at the arms lobbyists of ASD Europe (4).

Fossil fuel companies now play a particularly powerful role in shaping EU policy. IOGP alone has an annual lobbying budget of over 1 million EURO and enjoys privileged access to different energy fora, where the EU Commission or the Parliament invites them to discuss and help shape EU energy policy (5).

'These fossil fuel corporations are criminal, raking in massive profits from the death and destruction of war and climate breakdown. But the real crime', XR explains, 'is that our political leaders welcome them with open arms in the halls of power, where our democracy should determine policy, not these corporations. We're showing our politicians what should have been done a long time ago: to stop the corporate capture of our democracy, to ban this type of destructive fossil lobbying and to close down these offices.'

The action also forms part of a Europe-wide campaign against the 'declared war on life' represented by the expansion of the fossil war economy in Europe, with actions across Europe, in Germany, Italy and Spain (6).

  1. https://oilchange.org/blogs/big-oils-war-profiteering-must-end/
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/big-oil-huge-war-windfall-consumers
  3. https://iogpeurope.org/emergency-energy-measures/
  4. https://www.brusselstimes.com/2020329/activists-turn-pond-in-front-of-belgiums-controversial-arms-fair-into-bloodbath-tbtb ; https://www.bruzz.be/actua/samenleving/extinction-rebellion-blokkeert-hoofdzetel-industrielobby-cefic-brussel-2026-02-09 ; https://www.brusselstimes.com/1882348/climate-activists-take-action-in-brussels-against-rearm-europe .
  5. They have managed to capture the Commission ICM Forum meetings: https://corporateeurope.org/en/CarbonCoupRevisited ; They are a member of 15 expert groups of the Commission, including the EU Energy Platform Industry Advisory Group and EU Biodiversity Platform: https://transparency-register.europa.eu/search-register-or-update/organisation-detail_en?id=3954187491-70 ; They are part of the European Energy Forum and as such, get priviledged access to MEPs: https://www.europeanenergyforum.eu/discussions/keeping-industry-runningwhy-addressing-natural-gas-demand-matters-for-europes-industry-competitiveness/
  6. https://www.instagram.com/p/DY2I-ijsV2Z

Photos will be added to the Drive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xFK9ccS1bRorL8zL7WolCYh9p2WrHA-M

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Press Circle