VIENNA (AFP) — About 25 Greenpeace activists, some dressed as orangutans, blocked an OMV petrol station in Vienna Thursday, accusing the Austrian oil and gas giant of destroying the rainforest to make agrofuel.

A few of them brandished placards that read “OMV: no rainforest in the fuel tank.”

“Whoever fills up at OMV is destroying up to ten square metres of rainforest,” Jurrien Westerhof, an energy expert with Greenpeace Austria, said in a statement.

Greenpeace said fuel samples taken from OMV petrol stations had been found to contain soya and palm oil from Latin America and South East Asia.

“That shows a direct link between OMV agrofuel and the clearing of rainforests to set up plantations for palm or soya oil,” said Westerhof.

However OMV denied the charge and said it had invited Greenpeace to a meeting next week to discuss the “misunderstanding.”

“Greenpeace has the wrong target: OMV has asked its suppliers to deliver only agrofuels produced in central Europe, that is rapeseed oil and ethanol,” spokesman Thomas Huemer told AFP.

The organisation also criticised Environment Minister Josef Proell, who has called for fuel mixtures to make up 10 percent of the country’s fuel by 2010.

Share The Story :

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Palm Oil and Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.