Culture VS Big Oil
Three things I learnt from a recent campaign to expose Equinor's influence within the Norwegian culture sector.
I have unfortunately had to take a break the last few weeks. I was meant to post this article in June but took a slam snowboarding on the summer glacier at Stryn - I separated my shoulder and gave myself a pretty bad concussion. So I have had to take some time off and have been struggling to write. I just got my shoulder operated last week and so I am starting to get back into the swing of things now!
The campaign I work with in Norway, Folk Mot Fossilmakta, just finished a campaign a few weeks ago at one of Scandinavias biggest cultural festivals - The Bergen International Festival. The festival is sponsored by the Norwegian state owned oil company Equinor - like so much else in Norwegian society. From sports teams, to kids science competitions, to art, to the World Ski Championships, the media (through advertising in some of Norways biggest newspapers) and even the Norwegian Red Cross. Equinor has their fingers and influence in many many different areas of society.
We launched the campaign Folk Mot Fossilmakta (which directly translates to “People Against The Entrenched Power of The Fossil Fuel Industry” in English”) last summer. As the world passed 12 consecutive months over 1.5 degrees of warming, we felt the need to launch a civil disobedience campaign that went to what we believe is the heart of the issue in Norway - the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry. We wanted to systematically challenge that power at the place where it stems from - the positive influence for its activities that Equinor cultivates in Norwegian society.
When you are sipping your glass of champagne waiting to go into the concert at the Grieghallen in Bergen and you see the Equinor logo all over the bar - does it leave you with a feeling of “oh, surely this company isn’t thaaaaat bad”?
When your kid plays an Equinor sponsored computer game about energy sources for a city in 2050 and get points for building oil rigs alongside a windfarm - how does that make them feel about oil and gas in the future?
When you see posters on the bus stops all over Trondheim during the Ski World Championships with a photo of the boss of Equinor and the boss of the World Champs standing next to each other on the ski track with text alongside saying “On the same track”, how does that make you feel?
I would suggest that it most likely makes you, especially if you are a leader in Norwegian society, feel comfortable with Equinor. It makes you feel like they are on the same team even thought they are literally one of the worlds biggest polluters.
This is what we wanted to challenge over the last year. I think we have learned a lot of lessons from the World Ski Champs and the Bergen International Festival and this is what I want to go into further in this article.
The Campaign
The campaign followed a very similar arc to the campaign that we did at the World Ski Championships in Trondheim this past winter. We announced in early May that we would do disruptive protests at the event against the Equinor sponsorship. The organisers and Equinor went out in the media to try to delegitimise us: saying it is not appropriate to “destroy a cultural festival” and that Equinor is doing a “great job in the green transition”. We then proceeded to do different protests and actions at the event - disrupting two concerts, taking down the Equinor flags, distributing a petition addressed to the organisers and blocking one of the main roads in Bergen during the festival.
Despite many people always saying to us that this kind of thing just “destroys the conversation”, what actually ended up happening? Yes……surprise surprise…..a conversation was once again created around fossil fuel sponsorship! The media wrote about it and the festival even organised a public debate where we were invited to come and speak about the problem to the public alongside a vice president of Equinor and a board member of the festival.
In this article I want to go through 3 things that I learned during this campaign:
Why Culture Is Such An Important Arena For The Oil Industry.
The Effectiveness Of Public Disruption.
The Role of Scientists in Climate Activism
Why Culture Is Such An Important Arena For The Oil Industry
Living in Norway for nine years, I’ve been totally baffled by the pervasive presence and influence of fossil fuel sponsorships within Norwegian society.
When I first arrived, I couldn’t help but notice how often Equinor’s logo appeared across various events and public spaces. Coming from Scotland - another oil- producing country - I was quite struck by the difference. Growing up, I never saw my sports heroes adorned with oil company logos. I never had any of my local sports team sponsored by oil companies. I never had an oil industry logo on the materials I was reading at school. The notion of oil industry sponsorship being integrated into almost everything in society seemed pretty distant.
In Norway, however, these sponsorships are absolutely everywhere. What they do is basically create positive associations with fossil fuel companies - embedding themselves into the cultural fabric of society. Through this approach, they subtly influence public discourse. Instead of all Norwegians thinking of Equinor as one of the worlds biggest polluters. They think of Equinor as this nice cosy company that sponsors your kids local ski team, the cultural festival every year in Bergen or the Ski World Championships. They position themselves as integral, socially responsible companies that contribute to the cultural and national identity of the country.
This embedding into the cultural landscape effectively normalises their presence. It blurs the line between corporate interests and societal values. When so many Norwegians have such a positive association with Equinor, it makes it much more difficult for us who are speaking up against them and their activities. Instead of being viewed as a villain causing irreparable damage to our climate, Equinor appears as a nice commendable contributor to Norwegian society.
A recent article in DeSmog in May 2025 published subpoenaed documents which give us evidence that these cultural strategies have been actively used by the fossil fuel industry. For example, in a memo to UK staff in 2021 BP instructed their communications teams to “pivot existing sponsorships to mitigate social risks of the business”, to “showcase BP as a British champion” and to “profile BP as a thought leader and convenor, including during COP27”.
This activity creates a narrative that benefits the industry by undermining anti-fossil fuel sentiment and reinforcing the idea that they are an essential part of societal progress.
Companies like Equinor do not do this for a laugh. It was recently reported that Equinor had spent $82.7 million on sponsorships between 2020 and 2024. They have also been in hot water over the last few months after it emerged they had paid for a game to be distributed across schools in the UK called Energy Town. The company in the UK who’s job it was to promote the game appeared to accidentally say the quiet part out loud - writing on their website (before it was swiftly taken down once the story broke) that the game was part of an educational initiative which would help to: “build future talent pipelines and secure permission to operate at a time of sensitivity around fossil fuels, particularly in light of approval for the Rosebank development”.
It was also recently revealed that Equinor spent £200,000 to sponsor classrooms on Shetland - the Rosebank developement is just 80 miles of the coast of Shetland. Coincidence? I would argue, probably not.
Its simple really. When the fossil fuel industry’s influence is woven into stories of national achievement, cultural pride and even our educational system - it becomes far more difficult to challenge their role in climate breakdown.
So thats where our campaign comes in. In the next section I will explain how we are successfully able to “hack” these events that Equinor sponsor. To shift the conversation and the focus towards the climate crisis and the role of fossil fuels.
To learn more about oil and culture I really recommend following the work of Klimakultur - a Norwegian based organisation who work to educate and guide the Norwegian culture sector on climate action.
The Effectiveness Of Public Disruption
Like we did at the World Ski Championships in the winter, just by simply announcing protests at the event, got us in the media and generating public debate. On the first week of the festival the campaign disrupted a theatre production and within a few days the organisers of the festival asked us to join a public panel debate alongside a representative from Equinor. This event was not part of the program before the protests.
The fossil fuel industry, as I have described above, has huge power to influence the public during events like these. Ordinary people simply cannot compete on the same terms. I am almost 100% convinced that the festival would not have even dreamed of organising a panel debate to talk about fossil fuel sponsorship if we had simply sent them a letter or arranged a petition. Being disruptive puts ordinary people in a position to make demands and hold powerful structures accountable. It is democracy in action.
See the video below of Frida publicly challenging the vice president of Equinor and the leaders of the Festival at the panel debate:
However, during this campaign we used a variety of different tactics and levels of disruption. The media were not all that interested in what we were doing for the first few protests where it was just disruption of concerts and events at the festival itself. It was not until the final day where we announced a blockade of one of the main roads through the city itself that both the TV and the biggest newspaper in Bergen showed up. This again, to me, shows the importance of public disruption in activism like this.
So many people tell us when we disrupt the public that you “just put people off the cause” by inconveniencing them. Unfortunately, it is just a simple matter of fact that if you disrupt a major road for 10 minutes you challenge the normal flow of daily life and it forces the public and the media to confront the issue you are talking about. Many years of protest has shown us that blockades of roads are one of the the most effective methods for regular people to get out their message. Especially when they are challenging industries with million kroner marketing budgets.
I believe that living in a democracy means tolerating some inconvenience to our daily lives in exchange for the fundamental right to express dissent, protest and push for change.
For us as a campaign from a simple impact perspective, this strategy of public disruption has proven pretty effective. I did a media analysis of the coverage during this action which showed that we reached an estimated three million people through media coverage, with an advertising value equivalent (an approximate of the monetary value of earned media efforts by comparing it to the equivalent cost of placing advertisements) of 247 000 kroner.
The results from the World Ski Championships this winter were even more interesting due to getting so much international media attention around the protests. In the space of a couple months we got over 226 million in media reach and 18 million in advertising value equivalent.
I very much hope there is some people sitting round a table in Equinor getting very annoyed at the fact that a small group of people can get so much publicity with a tiny fraction of their own budget!
The Role Of Scientist’s in Climate Activism
During this campaign, we were joined by a few different scientists who took action with us. One of them was my friend Ina Nagler. She is a climate researcher at the Bjerknes Centre in Bergen and does modeling of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). I think that scientists have a CRUCIAL role to play in climate activism, and I think their involvement can really help to amplify the urgency of the message. Here is a statement below from Ina before she took action:
After my recent article about the climate conference in Sogndal, and the criticism I received from numerous different scientists - I think this is an even more important point. Often, I hear from scientists that they're hesitant to engage in activism because they believe that it will undermine their credibility and people wont listen to them as seriously because of it. They worry that being seen as activists might discredit their scientific work.
I believe it’s precisely this kind of engagement that’s needed now. For years, scientists have been warning us about the severity of the climate crisis - telling us how urgent and critical the situation is. But despite this, their words tend to be often ignored. I think that in 2025 it is critically important that scientists step out of their comfort zones and demonstrate that the crisis demands action - by risking their reputation or risking arrest. People tend to listen more when respected voices like scientists speak with moral authority and show they are willing to sacrifice for the cause.
The more scientists are willing to stand up, be visible, and participate in civil disobedience, the stronger their voice becomes. Their participation can also help to challenge the perception that climate activism is just a bunch of angry young protesters with nothing else to worry about. So, just a little shout out to all the scientists out there like Ina who understand the power of them engaging in civil disobedience and a challenge to more of you reading this to step up! I encourage following
here on Substack for lots of good writing and advice on the role of scientists in climate activism.Thanks for reading this weeks article. I will be back to weekly articles again from now on. I am on holiday back in Scotland for the rest of July so I am looking forward to writing a couple of pieces about issues here around land ownership and democracy which I find really interesting. Next weeks article will be about the glens just behind where my parents live in the Highlands - owned by the CEO of a massive oil and gas company. I think it is interesting how all these things are connected. We also see more and more of the land in Scotland being bought up by investment firms and energy companies for tree planting and carbon credits. Im looking forward to digging in to these things a bit more over the coming weeks.
This is such an important analysis of how oil companies use culture to normalise their presence as "good guys" and as part of thriving communities. I recently saw a presentation by environmental communication researcher, Libby Lester, about how Tasmanian salmon farming companies get their logo on local kids' sporting uniforms to achieve similar goals - of them being a core part of the local, regional communities. (I can share that work with you when I see it published.) Salmon farming is having a big impact on local ecologies, seeing once species close to extinction due to the deoxygenation of the sea bed.
Oil and mining companies also fund sport in Australia, but I was so impressed by the rejection of the proposed sponsorship of the Australian women's netball team by one particularly reviled sponsor, Hancock mining, whose founder had once said Indigenous Australians should be exterminated. He said this in the 1980s. One First Nations player, Donnell Wallam, said she would not wear a jersey with that logo, and the team backed her to reject the $15 million in funding. So impressive. Hancock is an example of how mining, imperialism, capitalism, and violence are closely intertwined (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-31/netball-australia-finds-new-sponsor-after-rinehart-withdrawal/101598888)
The lack of funding for arts and culture and for women's and kids sport means it's hard for those organisations to reject the offer of funds from mining sponsors, and it also means that groups and individuals who are already vulnerable to losing what they have are tasked with speaking up. They're tricky politics, and I'm always impressed when people turn down these kinds of funding that have such insidious alternative motives.
Great post - thanks for this work.
Super interesting post, thanks Callum & get well soon x