24/06/2002

London—24 June 2002--The Esso oil corporation has backed down from claims that a campaign against its products has had no effect, and now admits that environmentalists are hitting its business.

The world’s largest company is taking Greenpeace – a leading member of the StopE$$o campaign - to court in France, claiming that the organisation has inflicted reputational damage on the Esso brand name. The Texas-based corporation is demanding 80,000 Euros a day in compensation.

StopEsso has targeted Esso because the company has run a ten year campaign of dirty tricks against international action to combat climate change. It gave more money to the Republican party than any other oil company and has publicly supported President Bush’s backdown from the Kyoto Protocol.

Now Esso is suing Greenpeace in the French courts. The international campaign against the company has taken the ‘Esso’ logo and replaced the middle letters with two dollar signs. Esso claims the doctored letters resemble the moniker of the Nazi shock troops, the ‘SS’. The company is demanding the withdrawal of all the campaign logos, a penalty of 80,000 Euros a day for reputational damage and a further 80,000 Euros a day should Greenpeace France fail to comply. It also wants to stop the campaign using the expression “StopE$$o”.

Stephan Tindale, Greenpeace UK Director, said: ‘Instead of using bully-boy antics to gag free speech, we suggest Esso instead halts its campaign to subvert international action on climate change. We simply replaced two letters in Esso’s logo with the internationally recognised symbol for the US dollar. We find it ironic that the richest corporation in the world can’t recognise the dollar sign and confuses it with a Nazi symbol. In the meantime we’re delighted Esso has finally admitted that our campaign is having an effect.’

Charles Secrett, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Taking legal action against the campaign's imagery shows ExxonMobil is unable to defend its position on climate change or its lobbying of President Bush. But this legal action will backfire and expose ExxonMobil to even more scrutiny criticism than it has enjoyed so far."

The company has also recently seen 20% of its shareholders voting for a resolution supporting investment in renewable energy: $55 billion worth of shares.

A court hearing for the case has been set for Monday July 1st in Paris. The French StopEsso campaign was launched in May. Campaigns are also running in the US, Canada and Germany.

The papers filed by Esso show that it is seeking to have the French version of the StopEsso website taken down. While Esso refuses to discuss the content of the site, it says the use of the campaign logo on the site is enough to justify its removal .

The campaign in the UK is a coalition of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People & Planet.

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