Gas: petitions against Le Havre floating LNG terminal rejected

The three appeals against the Le Havre floating LNG terminal lodged by EELV MP Julien Bayou and the France Nature Environnement (FNE) association were rejected on Thursday by the Rouen administrative court.

Floating LNG terminal project approved by administrative court

“The installation of such a terminal on the Le Havre port site is possible when it is necessary to increase national liquefied natural gas processing capacity in order to ensure security of supply,” state the rulings consulted by AFP.

The administrative court followed the opinion of the public rapporteur, who had ruled in favor of rejecting all the requests.

Against a backdrop of heightened energy tensions since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the French government has selected a floating LNG terminal project by TotalEnergies to create a new entry point for gas into France.

Ecologist MP Julien Bayou, contacted by AFP, said he was “disappointed, it’s a legal defeat, we regret that the judge didn’t carry out a more thorough review”. “It’s enough to say that there is a potential risk in supply to characterize the existence of a serious threat, that seems light to us,” he added.

“The summer ahead is going to be terrible for the climate, and we’re going to be importing shale gas from the United States. We’re continuing to saw off the branch we’re sitting on with a big diesel engine,” warned the MP.

He asserts that “this decision does not signal the end of the mobilization against the LNG terminal”. “We regret this decision, but we were expecting it,” said Alice Béral, legal counsel for FNE Normandie.

“We regret that on the issue of serious threat, the court only retained the data of the Ministry of Ecological Transition. The possibility of an appeal to the Supreme Court is open, but has not yet been decided within the association”, she continued.

TotalEnergies’ lawyer, Auguste Debouzy, declared at the hearing that everything was “transparent” in this case.