Clydebank oil terminal blockade ends with 31 arrests

Police have arrested and charged 31 people after climate activists blockaded an oil terminal for two days.

Just Stop Oil carried out the action at the Nustar Clydebank facility in West Dunbartonshire demanding the government ends new UK oil and gas projects.

The protest began at about 04:00 on Tuesday and ended about 60 hours later, on Thursday.

Campaigners said they believed it was the longest occupation of an oil terminal in the UK.

Some activists had climbed on top of tankers and locked themselves to the entrance, while others entered the oil terminal and sat on pipes and silos to halt operations.

Police Scotland said 31 people were arrested and charged - 15 with breach of the peace and 16 with a contravention of a section of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which relates to trespass, and alleged malicious mischief - and added that reports would be sent to the procurator fiscal in due course.

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Ch Supt Lynn Ratcliff said Police Scotland had a "commitment to upholding human rights at the heart of everything we do".

"This means that we will protect the rights of people who wish to peacefully protest or counter-protest, balanced against the rights of the wider community," she said.

It was the first action of its kind in Scotland since the Just Stop Oil coalition began blockading UK fuel terminals on 1 April, leading to more than 1,000 arrests.

A UK government spokesman said: "We will not bend to the will of activists who naively want to extinguish North Sea oil and gas production.

"Doing so would put energy security and British jobs at risk, and simply increases foreign imports, whilst not reducing demand.

"We are committed to a strong North Sea industry as we transition away from expensive fossil fuels over the coming decades, and our recent British Energy Security Strategy sets out a long-term plan to ramp up cheap renewables and nuclear energy."