Author: Stella Levantesi, Italian climate journalist, photographer and author. Author of “I bugiardi del clima” (Laterza Editori, 2021), a book investigating climate change denial history and tactics. Research consultant for the Climate Litigation Lab at the University of Oxford.
Children in climbing gear, smiling at the camera. Children in football uniforms, wearing company logos. Children huddled around a computer in a classroom, learning how to build drones.
What do these descriptions have in common? They’re all about children in photos – and they’re all published on oil and gas company websites.
- “How do you ensure the maximum longevity of the fossil fuel industry that the whole of science is telling us needs to shut up shop as quickly as possible? You do it by trying to capture the imagination of, and normalize yourself to, the coming generations,” explained Andrew Simms, political economist, campaigner and co-founder of the New Weather Institute, a think-tank created to accelerate the transition, where he coordinates the Badvertising campaign to stop adverts by polluting industries.
The images showing children immersed in sports and cultural activities are key to Norwegian oil and gas companies Vår Energi and Equinor Energy’s sponsorship webpages.
- “Children – because they are the next generation, and fossil fuel companies are about securing their social license in perpetuity until they have drained every last drop of oil and gas from the Earth’s crust,” Simms underscored.
In the face of accelerating climate collapse and extreme weather events, the fossil fuel industry works hard to maintain a social license to operate through greenwashing and sponsorships, echoed Klimentina Radkova, legal campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic.
Fossil fuel companies have inserted themselves in schools, universities, museums, sports – even videogames, Radvoka mentioned. The common denominator is to promote positive associations and “normalize” harmful products, experts say.
For example, about Equinor’s children’s game called Energy Town, Equinor Out — a campaign by a group of civil society organizations across the globe working to stop Equinor’s fossil fuel expansion — stated: “Behind the colorful graphics and simplified logic lies a deeply troubling agenda: to normalize fossil fuels for a generation that will inherit the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”
Raising the Next Generation of Oil and Gas Supporters
“Oil education” in Norway starts very early. The emphasis on youth is blatant.
While Equinor’s accent is on initiatives that “spark and sustain curiosity for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) among children, young people and students,” Vår Energi’s sponsorship webpage proposes a number of images with kids and young athletes wearing the company’s six-legged breathing-fire dog logo, and offers a link for you to read about “the recreational opportunities for children and young people.”
Vår Energi is one of Norway’s largest exporters of gas and is majority owned by Italian fossil fuel multinational Eni.
On July 21st, Vår Energi announced a business combination with BlueNord, an oil and gas company with extracting operations in the Danish North Sea, promoting it as “building the largest independent producer of oil and gas in Europe” with a “long-term production target of approximately 450,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.”
Vår Energi sponsors sports arenas (“Folkehallene”) in the Stavanger region - known as Norway’s oil capital - which are publicly owned by the municipalities. The total number of visitors to the Folkehallene is more than 900 thousand every year.
According to exclusive data shared with Klimakultur by the New Weather Institute and Scientists for Global Responsibility, the Vår Energi - Folkehallene deal could induce approximately 73,900 tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year for 10 years, based on the company’s 2025 carbon footprint. This is equivalent to CO2 emissions from approximately 33.78 million kilograms of coal burned or 5,420,044,441 smartphones charged.
The Norwegian six-legged dog also sponsors the Vår Energi Challenge, promoted as an “innovation camp” which focuses on “creative joy and innovation” and includes multiple schools in the country. Vår Energi says that “what’s most important” is the “long-term dedication to the goal of improved public health of children and young people in the region.”
In a statement, Vår Energi said:
“We believe that being a responsible energy company also means contributing positively to the communities where we live and work. Through our sponsorships, we support activities that create opportunities, inclusion and development for people, regardless of their background.”
Experts emphasize that the cost of these sponsorships is a lot higher than any perceived “opportunity” promoted by oil and gas companies.
- “Any opportunity that the fossil fuel industries are offering up to a younger generation are weighed against both the immediate health impact cost and developmental cost of them living with the pollution of those fossil fuels. Not to mention the extreme weather and climate impacts of living in a heating and destabilized climate and planet,” Simms stressed.
According to a study published in 2024, pollution from oil and gas venting and flaring results in 7.4 billion dollars in health damages, more than 700 premature deaths, and 73,000 asthma exacerbations among children every year.
The risks of oil and gas activity on health are not new to oil and gas companies.
The fossil fuel industry knew at least 50 years ago that pollution from burning fossil fuels posed serious risks to human health and, for decades, orchestrated disinformation and lobbying campaigns against clean air regulations and other forms of climate and environmental protection policies, an investigation by the Guardian revealed.
In 2023, Vår Energi announced sponsoring the Norwegian Ski Federation’s Alpine teams.
- “I think especially in Norway, connecting to skiing, has been so important for the oil industry because skiing is so much part of the culture here,” said Calum Macintyre, climate activist, cofounder of Folk Mot Fossilmakta (“People Against Fossil Power”) and coordinator of Ski Fossil Free, a campaign that gathered 20,000 signatures against fossil fuel sponsorship at the winter olympics in Milan in 2026.
- “[Oil and gas] sponsorships are super dangerous […] A big goal of mine is to get fossil fuel influence out of sport, technology, and culture […] People think it’s free money, but it’s just not,” Macintyre added.
In 2026, Eni, which partners with universities, research centers, and sponsors a myriad of events throughout Italy and Europe, was the main sponsor of the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina.
According to a report by Badvertising titled “Why major polluter, multinational oil giant Eni, is the wrong sponsor for the Winter Olympics 2026”, the company’s annual production of fossil fuels “causes a loss of 985 km2 of snow cover and a loss of glacier mass of 6.2 billion tonnes.”
In a statement, Eni said:
“As of today, there is no detectable scientific evidence by which the melting of a specific snow cover area or quantity of glacier mass can be directly attributed to the annual fossil fuels production of a single company. The reported figures therefore are estimates which necessarily depend on a chain of assumptions and simplified modelling choices linking production to combustion, emissions, atmospheric concentrations, temperature change and, ultimately, changes in snow cover and glacier mass.”
The Badvertising report focuses on how global heating affects snow sports, as well as the direct links between “major climate polluters” and their sponsorships of this year’s Winter Olympics.
Simms explained that the biggest climate impact is through the high carbon sponsorships rather than the direct emissions from the staging of events, and how these strategies mirror decade-old narratives promoted by the tobacco industry.
- “The sponsorships associated them with a clean, healthy activity, and gave them access to a very young audience, which meant that they could develop relationships and familiarity and normalize the brands with these audiences as their future customers,” Simms underscored.
- “You benefit from associations with the freshness of youth, the prospect of there being a future, the untethered joy and happiness of young people,” he added. “You’re effectively mining the public emotional value of childhood for your own corporate gain.”
Oil and Gas Futures
Oil sponsorship and advertising investments are heavily geared towards fossil fuel recruitment strategies, especially in Norway.
- “There’s a big amount of pride amongst Norwegian people and industry workers as well, that we have this ‘liquid black gold’, as they call it [...] I understand that it may be very attractive to want to work for them [oil companies], but it’s also part of their strategy to reach out to everything from kids up to [university] students,” explained Radkova.
The number of employees in the extraction of crude petroleum and gas industry in Norway stood at over 28 thousand, as of 2023. That same year, the personnel costs of the industry amounted to 4.87 billion euros.
Vår Energi offers a “graduate program” which promises “permanent employment” and the opportunity to “solve the challenges of the future.”
Recent academic research explores the notion of “false solutions” offered by oil and gas companies. According to a study published in December 2025, in the face of increasing social pressure for climate accountability, the fossil fuel industry is attempting to portray itself as “part of the solution” to the crisis its product is responsible for in the first place.
“All their ‘solutions’ are about doubling down on the fossil fuels…deepening dependence and ensuring they can continue to profit from crises for decades to come,” says another report by Greenpeace.
On its careers website section, Eni published a video campaign promoting the tagline “make your inner 7 year old proud.”
Simms recounted thinking back to when he was a child and would go and watch sports matches:
“I would go and watch the Essex County Cricket Club play in the Benson and Hedges [a cigarette brand] championship and I’m sure if somebody had suggested to my 11-year-old self banning tobacco advertising and sponsorship, I would have thought that seemed like a radical notion, the presence of tobacco advertising sponsorship and promotion was completely normalized at the time.”
Eni promotes itself as “a global energy tech company” to prospective job applicants.
According to a report by the organization Reclaim Finance, Eni has invested in oil and gas, and renewable energy represented 1.1% of Eni’s energy mix in 2024.
In a statement, Eni said:
“The energy transition is a complex and capital-intensive process and cannot be achieved with renewables alone nor by an immediate phasing out of hydrocarbons. [...] Eni remains committed to its Net Zero target to 2050, even as other players have scaled back their transition plans. Eni today, through Plenitude, has 6 GW of installed renewable capacity, which will reach 6.5 GW by the end of this year, and 15 GW by 2030.”
In 2023, Greenpeace Italy and advocacy group Re Common sued Eni. The environmental groups alleged Eni used “lobbying and greenwashing” to push for more fossil fuels despite having known since 1970 about the risks from its oil and gas products.
A year later, Eni filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace Italy and advocacy group ReCommon.
The CASE coalition of non-governmental organisations says the lawsuit is “intended to silence organisations exposing Eni’s role in the climate crisis”.
According to the coalition, this case is part of a broader trend of fossil fuel majors resorting to SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) in order to “suppress climate activism and silence those who challenge its destructive business model.”
In a statement, Eni said:
“Eni has not taken intimidating legal action against any party and, moreover, has not sought financial damages of any kind, but only measures aimed at setting the record straight. [...] Such legal initiatives are in no way intended to intimidate or discourage public dialogue, but solely to exercise, on sound grounds, the legitimate right to protect the reputation and image of the Company, its employees and its stakeholders.”
CASE defines SLAPPs as a form of abusive lawsuit filed by a private party with the purpose of silencing critical speech.
Big Oil’s Favourite Sport is Soft Power
Experts say oil and gas sponsorships operate “behind the scenes,” in the VIP boxes of sports stadiums, for example, where “soft power” is exercised.
- “Influential and powerful people get together and feel good about each other and reinforce each other’s worldview. It’s a space where you get self-interested narratives of power and the incumbent energy industry reinforcing each other,” Simms explained.
- “Especially in Norway, the oil company sponsorships are very often for other leaders in Norwegian society to make them feel comfortable to platform Equinor, for example, at their institution,” Macintyre added.
While fossil fuel sponsorships rule with the scepter of soft power, Norwegian oil and gas companies lobbied to weaken EU policy committing countries to an international moratorium on oil and gas extraction in the Arctic.
According to data shared by non-profit think tank InfluenceMap, Vår Energi opposed the EU Arctic policy’s moratorium on hydrocarbon exploration, underscoring the need for oil and gas “to ensure EU energy security” in a March 2026 feedback on the European Commission’s update consultation of the policy.
In a statement, Vår Energi said:
“Vår Energi is one of Norway’s largest producers of oil and gas and a major and reliable provider of energy to Europe in time [sic] when energy security is key to maintaining national security. Oil and gas will remain part of the energy mix for decades to come, and our role is to produce it safely and responsibly. We recognise the impact of climate change and work systematically to reduce emissions from our operations and aim to become carbon neutral from our operations by 2030.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the fossil fuel industry has ramped up “energy security” messaging in order to maintain oil and gas dependence and justify projects that risk locking-in polluting infrastructure for the continent, a DeSmog investigation revealed.
According to the data provided by InfluenceMap, in its 2024 Annual Report and 2023 Annual Report, Vår Energi stated it engages directly with elected political representatives in the Norwegian Parliament, including members of the Energy and Environment Committee, as well as local politicians, in order to achieve access to offshore exploration.
- “There is a clear integrated playbook on how to exert maximum pressure […] so that decision makers feel that the presence of the fossil fuel companies is normalized,” Simms reiterated.
“Up in Flames”
While oil and gas lobbying and vested-interests-driven government policies have been effective in delaying and obstructing climate action for decades, climate litigation to hold key players accountable is growing.
In 2023, the organizations Greenpeace Nordic and Natur og Ungdom (“Nature and Youth”) sued the Norwegian state for allowing the development of three new oil fields in the North Sea, Breidablikk, Yggdrasil and Tyrving, without investigating how this would affect the climate.
The majority stakes in the Breidablikk oilfield are held by Equinor and Vår Energi.
After multiple wins and years of litigation for the environmental groups, the Norwegian state has appealed and the case will be heard in the Supreme Court at the end of August.
- “How absurd is it that we live in a country like Norway, which prides itself for being a democratic country and has a government that keeps [...] driving us further into climate chaos,” Radkova said.
Global efforts to regulate fossil fuel advertising are developing primarily through local and municipal bans on high-carbon promotions in public spaces.
For example, in the Netherlands, The Hague enacted the world’s first legally binding municipal ban on fossil fuel and high-carbon advertisements in public spaces in January 2025, and the Italian cities of Florence, Genoa, and Monza have adopted localized bans targeting high-carbon advertising in municipal spaces.
- “When the gap between their [oil and gas companies] carefully constructed view of the future of the next generation, which leaves out the costs of their business model, confronts the reality of what we’re watching on the news day in and day out, I think that version of the world that they attempt to hold together just goes up in flames, quite literally,” Simms concluded.
- “We will look at those webpages, at those promises, very soon in much the same way that our jaws drop when we see tobacco company adverts from the ‘50s and ‘60s featuring children and doctors.”
