On the 13th of May hundreds of activists gathered at the liquidfied natural gas (LNG) terminal of the harbor of Sines, a town in the Alentejo region of Portugal. This terminal is the entry place of most of the fossil gas that arrives to the country. Activists stoped the normal functioning of the harbor for more than 7 hours by blocking all land entry points, blocking the entrance of boats by having their own boats at sea. The emergency gas valve was also closed, stoping fossil gás from entering the pipeline.
This multipronged blockade of the LNG Terminal organized by the campaign Parar o Gás (Stop Gas) was done in order to fight for energy as a right, for an energetic transition and for the end of fossil colonialism.
Activists came from different parts of the country and gathered at a square in the center of Sines. From there a protests started, marching towards the entrance where gas trucks come and go to deliver gas to the rest of the country. There activists locked themselves, demanding 100% renewable eletricity by 2025, that could only be achieved by stopping gas.
At the same time, other activists gathered in front of the old Thermoeletric Power Plant, whose closure was done without any regards to the workers and not really contributing to the energy transition of the country. From there activits mobilized towards the main entrance gate of the terminal, where once again the gates were blocked. Activists once again demanded for a just transition and for gas to be stopped.
Activists of Greenpeach and Parar o Gás blocked the boat entrance of the Terminal for several hours, calling out for this winter to be the last winter of gas.
Later, the third and last gate of the terminal was blocked.
Support from the frontlines of Nigeria and Mozambique!
Nnimmo Bassey, from Health of Mother Earth Foundation, in Nigeria, supported the action by saying: “At the same time that the comunites of the Delta of Niger cannot breathe and have their lives slashed by the ecological disaster that is gas and oil expoloration, new conflit pipelines are being built. We ask everyone to mobilize in solidarity against fossil fuels and say: NEVER MORE”.
From Mozambique, Anabela Lemos from ONG Justiça Ambiental defends that “To stop fossil gas exploration we need global solidarity, like this action on the 13th of May. Only together we may stop neocolonialism and opression in Africa and the world.”
We are the handbrake. Closing the gas valves with our own hands and stopping crime.
Ao final da tarde, apoiantes de Parar o Gás entraram nas instalações intermediárias do gasoduto da REN, perto de Melides, e fecharam com as suas próprias mãos a válvula de emergência do gasoduto. Pela primeira vez em Portugal, ativistas pararam o gás, mostrando que a indústria fóssil não é intocável nem imparável.
At the end of the afternoon,, activists entered the facilities of the pipeline connected to the harbor, in a town nearby, and closed the emergency valve. This was the first time in Portugal that this sort of action happened.