Norway's government will on Monday ask the country's supreme court to overturn a ruling by lower-court judges that found three oilfield development permits invalid due to a lack of climate considerations.
The case pits environmental groups against Norway's oil industry, provider of half the country's export revenue, as well as the government whose policy is to prolong the extraction of crude and natural gas for decades to come.
Two lower courts have ruled in favour of Greenpeace and Young Friends of the Earth since the two groups first brought the case to trial in 2023, finding that Norway failed to properly assess the environmental impact from the three fields.
The case concerns Equinor's Breidablikk and Aker BP's Tyrving and Yggdrasil fields, of which the first two are already in production while the third is due to come on stream next year.
The green campaigners argue that the government failed to consider the climate impact of the burning of the fields' oil and gas, known as Scope 3 emissions, and that efforts to rectify this at a later stage were invalid.
But the lower courts have declined to order a halt to production while the legal process is ongoing, and have also suggested that the government could seek to remedy regulatory shortcomings.
"The state will argue that the additional assessments of foreign emissions now clearly satisfy all the requirements," the Office of the Attorney General said in a note to the court ahead of Monday's hearing.
Norway produces around 2% of global oil and became Europe's largest supplier of natural gas after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, making it a crucial provider of energy.
The supreme court hearing is set to run for four days, and a verdict in the case is expected sometime later this year.
(Reuters - Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Stephen Coates)