This story was published in partnership with Norway’s E24.
Norwegian oil company Equinor is spending more than £200,000 to sponsor science classrooms in the Shetland Islands, as it seeks approval for plans to develop the vast Rosebank oilfield 80 miles off the coast.
Opponents of Rosebank — the largest new oil and gas field in the North Sea — have accused Equinor of using its deep pockets to dilute concerns over further drilling. Developing the project would result the release of millions of tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when the oil it pumps is burned.
Ariane Burgess, a Scottish Green Member of the Scottish Parliament, said Equinor’s backing for the classrooms was “concerning.”
“The timing and location of these investments raise questions about the motives behind them, particularly in light of Equinor’s broader strategy to secure social license to operate in sensitive areas,” said Burgess, one of seven Scottish Green law-makers in the 129-seat assembly in Edinburgh.
The pop-up classroom — known as a “Newton Room” — launched in March and aims to reach 1,000 children aged 10 to 14 across the archipelago of 20,000 people over the next two years, said Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a Scottish agency partnering on the project.
The classroom will be set up in community centres near primary and secondary schools on several of Shetland’s 16 inhabited islands, taking in the Shetland mainland, Unst, Foula, Yell and Fair Isle.
Equinor, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian state, said the project would deliver “pioneering, face-to-face” programmes to develop science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. The decision to fund the initiative had “no link” to Equinor’s plan to develop Rosebank, and it had declined an opportunity to include its corporate logo, the company said.
“We are proud to support the first Shetland mobile Newton Room and to assist its core operations in the Highlands and Islands,” said Alice Baxter, Equinor’s UK spokesperson. “We look forward to seeing how the mobile Newton Room benefits the wider Shetland community and are delighted to be a key partner in this great programme for the region.”
‘Brainwash Children’
Equinor spent a total of $82.7 million on sponsorships between 2020 and 2024, with science, education and research as the main focus, according to a government response to a parliamentary question submitted by Lars Haltbrekken, an MP for the Socialist Left Party, on June 16.
Haltbrekken, a long-time critic of Equinor’s 30-year history of sponsoring education in Norway, had submitted the question in response to reports in Norwegian media detailing the company’s backing for a computer game aimed at UK schoolchildren. The game, called EnergyTown, was developed in partnership with London-based marketing agency We Are Futures and the Association for Science Education, a professional teachers’ body.
Climate campaigners said the game crossed the line between education and promoting fossil fuels because it portrayed renewable energy as “less reliable.”
EnergyTown was part of a two-year-old science education initiative called Wonderverse which has reached over 80,000 schoolchildren in the UK, according to Equinor’s website. Website copy that has since been deleted described Wonderverse as designed to “build future talent pipelines and secure permission to operate at a time of sensitivity around fossil fuels, particularly in light of approval for the Rosebank development.” We Are Futures did not respond to a request for comment.
“[Equinor] is trying to brainwash children into thinking it has the solution to the climate crisis, when in reality, fossil fuels are the reason we are struggling with the climate crisis today,” Haltbrekken told DeSmog.
Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, was the founding partner of the Newton Rooms mobile classroom programme developed by the nonprofit FIRST Scandinavia in Norway in 2003.
“It’s interesting to see how Equinor has developed a playbook for influencing children in Norway and then copy-pasted it to other countries like Scotland,” said Julie Forchhammer, co-founder of Norwegian climate advocacy group Klimakultur.
In Scotland, Equinor’s current education partnerships include a deal with the Aberdeen Science Centre, a museum near the Norwegian company’s UK headquarters in Aberdeen, and another with the city’s TechFest annual science festival.
Equinor committed £208,500 for the Shetland Islands mobile classroom project as part of a total package of £385,000 to support the Science Skills Academy education initiative run by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said Morven Fancey, the agency’s head of housing, skills and population.
“Our core content and supporting educational materials for Newton Room activities were developed at the beginning of the Highland operation and are branded by [Science Skills Academy] independently of any industry involvement,” Fancey said.
Island Opinion Divided
The sponsorship deal with Highlands and Islands Enterprise was agreed in 2023, Fancey said. That was the same year that Equinor won approval for Rosebank from the UK’s former Conservative government, sparking outcry among climate campaigners.
Equinor is now seeking re-approval for Rosebank after Scotland’s highest court dealt a blow to the project in January by ruling the original decision unlawful because it had failed to consider the environmental impacts of burning the fossil fuels extracted from the oilfield.
Opening any new oil and gas fields in the North Sea is incompatible with achieving 2015 Paris Agreement goals of avoiding catastrophic climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5°C, according to a June report by academics at University College London. Burning Rosebank’s oil and gas would produce up to 200 million tonnes of CO2 over the project’s lifetime, which is more than the combined annual emissions of 28-low income countries, wrote one of the report’s authors in an article for The Conversation.
Opinion over Equinor’s role in sponsoring the classrooms is divided on the Shetland Islands, which have historically benefitted from oil and gas money.
“In Shetland, the fact that our kids have amazing leisure facilities, the roads have no potholes, and the care homes are good is all because of fossil fuels,” said Margaret Goddard, a doctor who lives on the islands of Burra, and who has daughters aged 11 and 14.
But she expressed concerns over the climate crisis, and Equinor’s motives, acknowledging, “These things are very difficult.”
Alex Armitage, a Scottish Green councillor for Shetland Islands Council said he found Equinor’s role “quite dystopian.”
“An oil company that’s making very little effort to reduce carbon emissions and is greenwashing all of its operations is seeking to show that it’s trying to help the next generation,” Armitage said. “Everything it’s doing goes against that.”
Like other oil companies, Equinor has rowed back on its climate commitments in the past year, having announced in February that it would slash planned investment in renewables and low-carbon solutions by around 50 percent between 2024 and 2027. By 2026, Equinor plans to maintain over 95 percent of its energy production from fossil fuels, according to analysis by the environmental law nonprofit ClientEarth.
Equinor holds an 80 percent stake in Rosebank in a joint venture with Ithaca Energy, which is owned by Israel’s Delek Group. In 2023, Delek Group appeared on a UN list of 97 companies whose activities in the West Bank “raised particular human rights concerns.”
‘Extensive Influence’
Oil companies view educational and cultural sponsorships as crucial tools for deflecting pressure from climate activists, influencing legislation, and portraying themselves as gatekeepers to climate solutions, according to a previous DeSmog review of internal industry documents subpoenaed by the U.S Congress as part of an investigation into oil industry disinformation that concluded last year.
Equinor was not a direct target of the investigation, which focused on the U.S. businesses of ExxonMobil , Chevron, Shell USA Inc. and BP America. The Norwegian company is, however, a member of the American Petroleum Institute lobby group, which described sponsored community groups as among the “best and most influential voices with targeted policymakers on industry issues,” according to a subpoenaed document from October 2017.
The findings built on previous research showing how the fossil fuel industry has spent nearly a century using educational sponsorships to shape public opinion about energy and the environment. As early as 1928, Standard Oil of California (which became Chevron) was sponsoring educational radio broadcasts that reached millions of American students over decades. Recent programmes include BP’s Science Explorers, a series of free online resources that now reaches over half of UK secondary schools.
In the latest sign of the oil and gas industry seeking to influence young people, DeSmog reported on June 30 that a group of six Canadian fossil fuel companies known as Pathways Alliance had been sponsoring science fairs for children. The finding followed a report issued by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment earlier this year that documented the sector’s “extensive influence on climate education for elementary and secondary school students.”
‘Cynical Tactic’
Equinor has been a sponsor of the Aberdeen Science Centre since 2019, funding the facility and supporting its partnership with Norway’s Vitenfabrikken (The Science Factory), a children’s science museum in the city of Bergen. The two institutions are linked via an initiative called the North Sea Collaboration Project, which develops science and technology activities aimed at children, focused on “carbon emissions reduction solutions” and climate awareness, according to the Aberdeen Science Centre’s website.
Aberdeen Science Centre did not respond to a request for comment.
The TechFest event, which Equinor sponsors alongside BP and Shell, includes Equinor branding in its 2025 programme directory next to listings for workshops aimed at children as young as four. TechFest did not respond to a request for comment.
Through its Hywind floating wind project, Equinor provided £60,000 to transform a disused classroom at Peterhead Academy into what the school called an “ultra-modern” renewables space, complete with screens, break-out areas and turbine models, which opened in 2018, according to trade publication Energy Voice.
Peterhead is also the site of a planned Equinor carbon capture and storage project, which is facing questions over its likely economic viability and climate impact. DeSmog revealed in June that UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves had told Equinor last year that the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits in the form of carbon capture subsidies.
Such programmes reflect a broader oil industry strategy to preserve its reputation among future generations, said Klimakultur’s Forchhammer. “It’s a cynical tactic, but they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t working.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Shailer, Shetland Times
