Norwegian climate ruling - Supreme Court declares PDO approvals for three petroleum fields invalid

Climate Case II (Klimasøksmål II) builds on the Supreme Court's 2020 judgment in Climate Case I, which concerned petroleum licensing in the Barents Sea. In that case, the majority accepted that global climate effects, including combustion emissions, could be deferred to the PDO stage.

In June 2023, the NGOs Greenpeace Nordic and Nature and Youth Norway challenged the PDO approvals for Breidablikk, Tyrving and Yggdrasil. In January 2024, Oslo District Court held that the approvals were invalid because the PDO impact assessments did not include combustion emissions.

On 14 November 2025, Borgarting Court of Appeal upheld the District Court’s decision. It concluded that the Government’s new assessments before the appeal had not remedied the deficiencies.

The State appealed to the Supreme Court. In May 2026, before the hearing, the Government reconsidered the PDO approvals but again decided not to reverse them.

For the majority, the decisive issue was the continued absence of a cumulative assessment. Assessing each field’s combustion emissions in isolation was insufficient. The assessments must also describe emissions from other existing and approved petroleum projects on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) and their combined effect on global warming. Neither the supplementary assessments nor the Government’s May 2026 reconsideration met this requirement. The cumulative effects must be addressed in the operators’ environmental impact reports and subjected to public consultation.

The majority's requirements related to assessment of combustion emissions prior to the approval of an PDO may be summarised as follows: 

• The environmental impact assessment must describe the gross combustion emissions likely to result from the oil and gas to be extracted. The authorities must subsequently assess those emissions.
• The anticipated effect of those emissions on global warming must be described and assessed.
• The assessment must cover the project’s own combustion emissions and cumulative emissions from other existing and approved petroleum projects on the NCS, including their effect on global warming.
• The project must therefore be assessed in the context of petroleum projects already authorised by Norwegian authorities, rather than in isolation.
   

The Supreme Court nevertheless rejected some of the more extensive requirements requested by the claimants, and stated that there is no obligation to assess the concrete downstream consequences of the projected temperature increase or to compare combustion emissions against remaining global carbon budgets. The authorities must, however, independently assess the negative climate consequences and explain how these have been taken into account.

The five dissenting judges agreed that gross combustion emissions and their climate effects must be assessed. However, they disagreed that each operator’s report must also assess cumulative emissions from other Norwegian offshore petroleum projects. In their view, assessing the individual project’s emissions and contribution to global warming was sufficient. They considered that the supplementary reports and the Government’s May 2026 reasoning had remedied the earlier deficiencies and would have ruled in favour of the State.

The Supreme Court underlined that as the licensees of Breidablikk, Tyrving and Yggdrasil were not parties to the case, the invalidity will not result in the approval of the PDOs being invalid in relation to the licensees. The Supreme Court further clarifies that the invalidity results in an obligation for the government to assess the matter again, which may result in either confirmation of the PDO approvals or an alteration of the approvals. In connection with this, the Supreme Court stated that there is no absolute requirement under EEA law for the government to suspend or withdraw the PDO, and that EEA law does not prohibit approvals after commencement or completion of a project. However, the Supreme Court states that subsequent approval must: (i) remain an exception, (ii) not enable circumvention of EEA assessment requirements, and (iii) account for environmental effects already incurred—not only future effects

Following the judgement, the Ministry of Energy is expected to update its PDO guidelines, to ensure future PDOs are in line with the requirements set out by the Supreme Court. Climate Case I and Climate Case II are also something that may be addressed in the forthcoming White Paper on Petroleum Policy, scheduled for submission to Parliament in spring 2027.