politics
How Did Over 100 Near-Identical Anti-Drilling Comments Against Norway Suddenly Appear in EU Arctic Consultation?
An EU consultation on Arctic policy was suddenly overwhelmed by more than a hundred near‑identical anti‑drilling comments in mid‑March, many submitted anonymously and across multiple EU countries, in what appears to have been a coordinated campaign targeting Norwegian petroleum interests.
Published
From December 2025 until early March 2026, the European Commission’s public consultation on its updated Arctic policy was mostly quiet. For weeks, almost no citizen submissions mentioned "drilling". Then, on March 6, the pattern changed abruptly.
The first explicit comment opposing Arctic drilling appeared that day. Three days later, the floodgates opened. Between March 9 and March 15, the consultation received well over one hundred submissions mentioning oil and gas in the Arctic, more than 85 percent of the total number filed on the subject during the entire three‑month period.
Almost all of them argued against oil and gas development in the Arctic, and a large share of them did so using the same paragraphs, sentence structures, and boilerplate claims.
Versions of the same text
Roughly 73 percent of the comments in this period were filed anonymously, often from different EU member states but showing the same tone, wording, and structure. Despite purported origins from Germany, France, Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, and more, many of the submissions contained identical phrases.
Others were lightly rewritten versions of the same template text.
Meaning is this a bigger radical greener effort?
One sentence, or variations of it, appeared more than thirty times:
“The updated EU Arctic Strategy must decisively ban any new oil and gas projects north of the Arctic Circle.”
Whether this is part of a concerted external effort remains to be seen.
"Radical greener effort"
“Are those comments arguing against drilling at the same time also referring to renewable energy as an opportunity in the Arctic and for Europe? Meaning is this a bigger radical greener effort,” asks Andreas Raspotnik, Director of the High North Center for Business and Governance at Nord University.
“It shouldn’t come as a surprise if some Europeans are actively engaging themselves in the effort to not exploit Arctic resources, also the latest - 2021 - Arctic policy included a paragraph on a potential moratorium,” Raspotnik continued.
Another repeated block focused on the Barents Sea:
“The Barents Sea is home to some of the world’s largest fish populations, millions of seabirds, whales, polar bears, and unique cold‑water coral ecosystems.”
A third recurring line was used in more than twenty submissions:
“There is no proven method to clean up oil spills in the harsh Arctic conditions, with cold, darkness, ice, and strong currents.”
Comments target Norwegian projects
In fact, dozens of comments included criticism of Norway’s activity in the region using a variation of “despite this, Norway is pushing ahead…” another sign that contributors copied text from a template.
Furthermore some formatting errors show up across comments attributed to different countries, a hallmark of automated or centrally distributed messaging.
A striking detail is the geographical mismatch. Many comments were marked as coming from citizens in countries with little direct involvement in Arctic petroleum policy, yet their texts focused almost exclusively on Norway’s plans for Barents Sea drilling.
Specific projects
The repeated naming of specific Norwegian projects, such as new Barents Sea blocks and the Wisting field, strongly suggests that the campaign’s target was not the EU institutions themselves, but Norwegian Arctic energy development framed through the EU consultation process.
With respect to Wisting these types of sentences repeated over and over:
“possibly approving the massive Wisting oil field near the ice edge”
“considering approval for the vast Wisting oil field near the ice boundary”
“the potential approval of the massive Wisting oil field near the ice edge”
Again, if these repeated comments are a coordinated effort remains unclear but it does raise questions.
“Could this be a larger Russian effort to further divide EU/Norway, particularly as Europe is more and more dependent on Norwegian gas post February 2022,” wonders Raspotnik.
Only a handful of original comments
Only around a dozen submissions in the entire dataset appear to be original, individually authored texts.
These tend to be longer, more personal, and vary significantly in tone, unlike the mass‑produced entries, which repeat the same environmental claims, the same reference points, and the same urgent calls for a moratorium.
The surge’s timing also fits the profile of a coordinated push. Large advocacy networks often mobilize supporters just before a consultation’s deadline to maximize visibility. In this case, the final week produced nearly all comments on drilling, with the heaviest surge in a narrow five‑day window around March 12.
Before March 6, not a single citizen had mentioned “drilling” in the consultation.
Designed to influence
For Norway, the implications are clear. Although the consultation was run by the European Commission and formally open to the public, the content of the submissions overwhelmingly targeted Norwegian drilling activity.
How much are those comments actually taken into account by policymakers?
The campaign appears designed to influence the EU’s stance on Arctic resource extraction vis-à-vis Norwegian operations. While environmental organizations frequently coordinate public‑comment drives, the scale and uniformity of this one stand out.
What the Commission received during that week was not a broad sample of diverse public views, but the product of a highly synchronized advocacy effort.
Messaging campain
As the EU moves toward finalizing its Arctic policy update, the consultation record will formally show strong citizen opposition to Arctic drilling. But the data possibly reveals something more specific: an organized, possibly cross‑border messaging campaign, replicated across dozens of nearly identical entries, and concentrated in a single week.
“How much are those comments actually taken into account by policymakers in the Commission / EEAS when eventually drafting the new policy? And does the EU run some kind of scan once the process is finished to check against possible external influences,” concludes Raspotnik.
For policymakers, and for Norway, the question is not only what the comments say, but how they came to dominate the public record.
