Body bags piled outside Equinor as profit spike expected from war on Iran

Fossil Free London staged a protest outside the London offices of Equinor on 5 May. This came ahead of the oil and gas giant’s Q1 profits announcement tomorrow.

Activists piled several life-sized body bags outside the offices of Rosebank co-owner Equinor, as one campaigner dressed as an oil executive stood on top of them.

The profits Equinor made this quarter are expected to have spiked due to oil price shocks caused by Trump and Netanyahu’s war on Iran. This follows a general trend for the oil and gas sector, with BP reporting recently that its quarterly profits had more than doubled.

The protest comes as the government prepares to decide the fate of the Rosebank oil field, the largest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea. This is after the Scottish courts overturned its original approval in January 2025.

Equinor could even be set to make more than its competitors. As Europe’s largest gas provider with no production assets in the Middle East, it’s seen its share price rise by over 45%.

This is while the UK expects more price rises driven by the conflict, and over 2,000 people have been killed by the US and Israel’s war on Iran.

Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, said:

Everyone knows the gory truth about the oil industry: whether it’s from the ravages of war, from freak floods that drown people in their homes, or from supercharged fires that trap and burn the defenceless in a road-melting nightmare, as the bodies pile high the oil profits swell.

Equinor’s oily dollar bills are signed in blood. Profiting from conflict and soon permanent, irreversible and exponentially deteriorating climate breakdown is disastrous and utterly unjustifiable.

More oil means blood money. More oil means war and climate impacts. More oil means disaster.

We must force a reckoning with the relentless growth of this cancer and face up to the fact that either we keep oil in the ground, or we all end up there far sooner than we should. Stop Rosebank.

Featured image via Fossil Free London