LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS (STILL) LOVES GREENWASHING
15.10.2025
⬆️ Scrubby gets ready to paste posters to the windows of the UN IMO.
—
The UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) 2nd Extraordinary Session is meeting this week. It is a meeting where IMO delegates and Member States will be finalising plans to regulate shipping pollution.
To mark this special occasion we thought we’d remind them that not all shipping emissions are treated equally. In fact some might not be considered at all. Last week Shell announced plans to extract more liquefied natural gas – the fuel the oil, gas and shipping industry is lobbying to be exempt from IMO shipping pollution regulations.
⬆️ Window redecoration is go!
—
⬆️ Why are there posters on the window? It’s to remind UN IMO Member States and delegates that all fossil fuels should be treated equally. After all ‘Liquefied Natural Gas ❤️ Greenwashing’ only when LNG escapes planned shipping pollution regulations.
—
⬆️ Here comes Scrubby with another poster.
—
O destino do Oceano depende de todos nós.
As nossas intervenções dependem do seu apoio.
At 18:00hrs, while delegates were enjoying canapés and sipping wine, a ‘Scrubby the greenwashing Sponge’ appeared at the window of their reception holding a poster. A poster containing the graphic message ‘LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS LOVES GREENWASHING’. The precarious Scrubby, operating on a long 4 metre pole, pasted the poster onto the window, giving everyone inside the opportunity to applaud its wonderful skills. It then bobbed down to the ground to pick up another poster to repeat the process until the IMO windows were obscured.
⬆️ Time to take a closer look at who has been greenwashing LNG. You don’t have to look far, the membership of MAR/LNG provides a full list of scoundrels. Oil and Gas can’t be a part of ‘The Future of Shipping’. If the UN IMO is serious about reducing pollution shipping must stop using fossil fuels.
—
Scrubby represents the blatant greenwashing that will give LNG a free pass to avoid any MEPC plans to include LNG in shipping pollution regulations / tax levies – making LNG the go to fossil fuel for shipping (while still accelerating dangerous emissions and obscene profits for the fossil fuel and shipping industries). ‘Scrubby the greenwashing Sponge’ was keen to make sure O futuro do transporte marítimo mensagem em nome de SEALNG.ORG was seen by all IMO Delegates and Member States.
After all Scrubby didn’t want its employers, the fossil fuel and shipping industries, to miss out on a chance to greenwash LNG ahead of the MEPC discussions on shipping fuel levies (which companies like CMA CGM e Exxon Mobil as well as classification societies like DNV e ABS hope LNG can avoid by selling itself as the ‘green’ fuel it certainly isn’t).
⬆️ Delegates take photos of the posters.
—
The performance celebrates the rampant puppetry at large in MEPC meetings. Meetings dominated by the interests of the shipping industry, an industry intent on cementing its romance with the oil and gas industry by adopting dirty LNG as its fuel of choice. This is despite recent research which has exposed the lies of industrial lobbying platforms like MAR/LNG. A investigação revista por pares reveals that LNG extracted and exported from the US is 33% more polluting than coal, vying for the title of most lethal of the fossil fuels. Methane leaks occur throughout the LNG extraction and supply process increasing mortality levels and causing health problems. And LNG extraction destroys land and coastal communities onde quer que surja uma fábrica de GNL. Estas mesmas fugas continuam a bordo Navios movidos a GNL, helping accelerate climate collapse and the collapse of our economies. To cover up this uncomfortable truth the industry trumpets "biometano e "e-metano products that are only 6% of the EU market and even less worldwide (and both still leak methane throughout their supply chains and, in the case of biomethane, use up land resources and bump up food scarcity and prices). The industrial scale of LNG greenwashing has converted the UN IMO MEPC into a puppet for the oil and gas industry.
⬆️ “This is private land, please leave now!!!”
“I’ll try sir, but please be careful on the wet floor, it’s rather slippy.”
“Just leave, get off this land, you are committing soft trespass.”
“I will if you remove the barrier, my hip’s not so good and I can’t get over it…”
—
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) – os factos
O GNL é um combustível fóssil que, quando extraído, transportado e queimado como combustível marítimo, derrama metano para a atmosfera - um perigoso gás de aquecimento global que está acabado 80-vezes mais aquecimento climático in the short-term (20 years) than carbon dioxide.
O Painel Intergovernamental sobre Alterações Climáticas (IPCC) da ONU identificado cortes rápidos das emissões de metano como uma das principais prioridades, a fim de limitar o aquecimento global a cerca de 1,5°C o mais próximo possível. Os IPCC's último relatório A concentração na mitigação do clima torna claro que o gás fóssil sob a forma de GNL não é uma solução para a descarbonização da navegação.
Contrariamente ao que a ciência do clima exige, as empresas de navegação e portuárias têm andado a todo o vapor, a investir fortemente em GNL fóssil, alegando que o combustível reduzirá os seus impactos ambientais e a poluição climática. Existem atualmente mais de 785 novos navios de carga encomendados a nível mundial, sendo que mais de 400 estão a ser construídos para funcionar com GNL fóssil sujo.
Burning more fossil LNG onboard vessels is a disaster in the making for our planet. It would only increase methane emissions from ships, which already rose by 180% between 2016 and 2023, according to a recent International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT) report.
As emissões de metano também diminuem a qualidade do ar. Além disso, o aumento da procura de GNL - incluindo no sector marítimo - conduz a impactos adversos em terra, como a poluição da água potável, a redução da produção agrícola e o aumento das taxas de mortalidade prematura.
⬆️ Regulating shipping pollution is hungry work, unfortunately the canapés didn’t find their way outdoors.
—
Precisamos de regulamentos rigorosos sobre o metano na OMI
De acordo com o IPCC (AR6)Para que a UE possa fazer face à emergência climática e aos seus impactos devastadores sobre as pessoas, é necessário combater urgentemente as emissões de metano a curto prazo. Os proponentes do GNL estão a iludir os decisores políticos sobre a verdadeira dimensão dos impactos do GNL no clima e na saúde, ao mesmo tempo que põem em risco um futuro de sobrevivência neste planeta.
A Organização Marítima Internacional (OMI) é o organismo das Nações Unidas que regula o transporte marítimo internacional. Atualmente, não existe regulamentação internacional específica para as emissões de metano dos navios. However, several opportunities exist to comprehensively integrate methane into the IMO’s regulatory framework during the Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC82). If this doesn’t happen we propose a more drastic future for the IMO.
⬆️ “Look at that poster the puppet stuck to the window!”
“Does it mean we’re complicit in greenwashing?”
Yes is it does, and so is the UN IMO if it doesn’t regulate methane (the leaky byproduct of LNG) along with other fossil fuels.
—
Apelo à ação na OMI:
O GNL é um combustível fóssil que tem um impacto negativo sobre as pessoas, o ambiente e o clima em todas as fases do seu ciclo de vida.
Exigimos:
1. As emissões de metano são consideradas como um gás com efeito de estufa e incluídas em quaisquer planos do MEPC para aplicar um imposto sobre o carbono ao transporte marítimo, ponderado pela capacidade excessiva de forçamento climático do metano fugitivo.
2. The Member States of the IMO recognise LNG as a fossil fuel and stop being misled by the SEA LNG os lobistas, excluindo-os da OMI.
3. The IMO to promote efficiency and the use of slow steaming, capacity reduction and embarcações à vela e eléctricas incentivando a adesão ao sector do transporte marítimo, capacitando e melhorando as competências dos trabalhadores e introduzindo rotas marítimas mais justas.
Se a OMI não atuar, a Rebelião dos Oceanos exige:
The UN must form a new, transparent, and representative body to govern the Ocean for the benefit of ALL life. This new body must have the restoration and replenishment of the Ocean on which all our lives depend as its only measure of success. It should replace corporate power with people power. And it should represent the many forms of marine life who actually make the ocean a home.
—
Photos by S. Staines.