The oil company Esso has secured an interim high court injunction to prevent environmental protesters disrupting construction work on a 105km-long aviation fuel pipeline.

Activists have targeted efforts to replace most of the underground Southampton to London pipeline by interfering with equipment and “attacking” it with angle grinders, a judge was told.

One protester, named in a court document as Scott Breen, has dug himself in next to the M25 at Runnymede in Surrey in an effort to disrupt the installation of the replacement pipe, a court heard.

The Southampton-to-London pipeline project, which received development consent in October 2020, aims to replace 90km of pipe between Boorley Green in Hampshire and Esso’s west London terminal storage facility in Hounslow, near Heathrow airport.

Replacing the pipeline, originally constructed in 1972, will help keep 100 tankers a day off the road, Esso claims. It is due for completion next year.

Esso Petroleum Company Limited, owned by ExxonMobil, was granted an interim injunction against Breen and “persons unknown” after a hearing before Mr Justice Eyre at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday.

Timothy Morshead QC, representing Esso, said in written submissions that it urgently sought the injunction to prevent people from “conspiring to injure” its business “by unlawful means”.

“The unlawful means in question consist of the actual and threatened trespasses to goods and also to land which [Esso] has experienced – and which continues to be threatened against the pipeline project,” Morshead said.

“The activities carried out by some protesters go far beyond lawful and peaceful protest, and give rise to serious health and safety concerns.”

Morshead said the company sought an order only applying to acts “with the intention of preventing or impeding construction of the Southampton to London pipeline project”.

The barrister said Breen, “a known tunneller”, had dug himself into land owned by Runnymede borough council at a “sensitive” position near the motorway that was needed by Esso’s contractors for access.

“He has boasted about it on social media,” Morshead said.

Eyre said in his ruling that there was “material indicating an agreement between a number of persons to disrupt the construction of the pipeline, to do so by entry on to private land and/or land which is enclosed for the purposes of the construction of the pipeline”.

He said the purpose of this was to “harm” Esso “by preventing it building the pipeline which it is authorised to build”, and said there had been “threats of further disruption” posted on the internet.

The judge noted that protest action came against a background of “strongly held beliefs and concerns about the effect of air travel” and said he considered the “legitimate public interest in the changes to the climate”.

Eyre concluded that an injunction was “proportionate and necessary to ensure that [Esso] is permitted to carry on its lawful activities”.

He set a date of 7 September for when the injunction, which has geographical limits, will be reconsidered by the court.

The judge said he was “just about persuaded” to order an injunction against Breen, who was not represented at court.

He noted that on social media Breen had accepted that he had been asked to leave his pit, dug at Chertsey, by Esso and the council but he had not done so.



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