Europe 1 with AFP 5:10 p.m., September 08, 2022

Greenpeace activists on Thursday blocked the unloading of a shipment of Russian gas at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Sweden.

One of the NGO's spokespersons said the Greenpeace action started around 10 a.m. and was still going on five hours later. 

Greenpeace activists blocked the offloading of a Russian gas shipment at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Sweden on Thursday, the terminal owner and Greenpeace said.

"Activists have climbed onto the terminal's loading arms and they have boats in the water," Olga Vaisanen, spokeswoman for Gasum, the Finnish company that owns the terminal in Nynäshamn, near Stockholm, told AFP. .

The spokesman said the Greenpeace action at the terminal began around 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) and was still ongoing more than five hours later, despite police forcing activists off loading arms.

At sea, the Greenpeace sailboat "Witness" and activists in kayaks prevented the LNG carrier Coral Energy, registered in the Netherlands, from docking and unloading its cargo.

"Stop funding Putin's war" 

The activists had also unfurled banners bearing the slogans "Stop funding Putin's war" and "Stop the trade in Russian fossils", while calling on the Swedish government to immediately stop its imports of Russian gas.

"The fact that Russian gas is still allowed to enter Sweden, more than six months after Putin began his bloody invasion of Ukraine, is unacceptable," Greenpeace activist Karolina Carlsson said in a statement.

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"We all know that fossil fuels from Russia are financing the war. The (Swedish) parliament has given the government a clear mandate to stop all imports of Russian energy into Sweden and it is the obligation of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson to do so," she added.

For the time being, there are currently no European or Swedish sanctions on gas imports from Russia, only on oil and coal.

But tension rose on Wednesday between Moscow and the EU over Russian gas deliveries, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to stop all deliveries of hydrocarbons in the event of a price cap, a project relaunched the same day by Brussels.