Protesters gathered outside Senate House to protest against oil company SLB’s connections to the University of Cambridge earlier today.

SLB – formerly known as Schlumberger – is the world’s largest oilfield services provider. The company has a major research facility on the University’s West Cambridge site, which has led protesters from the Organisation of Radical Cambridge Activists (ORCA) and Extinction Rebellion Cambridge (ERC) to demand that the University cut ties with the fossil fuel giant.

The company provides services for fossil fuel projects across the world, including Israel’s Leviathan gas field – which ORCA has said to be “enabling Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and literally fuelling its current genocidal war on Gaza”.

Protesters also drew attention to SLB’s other projects, including SLB’s work in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and the company’s collaboration with TotalEnergies to provide drilling services and oil wells at the Tilenga oilfield in Uganda – sited on land which is home to Indigenous communities.

Activists tied red ribbons to the Senate House railings in order to show “the University’s web of complicity through its collaboration with SLB”. Railings around Senate House were covered with signs that read, “SLB fracking up the planet” and “code red for humanity”. Six individuals sat in silent protest while other members of ORCA and ERC handed out leaflets.

This is not the first instance where activists have campaigned against SLB. Last year activist groups criticised the University after it planned to rename the Schlumberger Professorship of Complex Physical Systems to the Alan Turing Professorship of Complex Physical Systems, while still retaining links with the oil company.

In 2022, climate change activists broke all the front windows of SLB’s Gould Research Centre. The year before, ERC blockaded SLB’s research centre using a pink boat and fake oil rig which resulted in multiple arrests before the activists ended their blockade.

A supporting scientist at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Zero Hour climate group also attended the event to advocate the Climate and Nature Bill. When asked about her work, she said: “We’re trying to encourage as many MPs as possible to support the bill. The bill will completely change how the UK is dealing with climate and nature, because so far, we have lots of pledges, lots of promises, but not that much is going on.”

A spokesperson for the campaigners said: “SLB is responsible for planet-killing emissions and the destruction of nature in the majority of countries around the globe. The litany of destruction is almost limitless – SLB is complicit in human rights abuses in Uganda, Israel’s genocide in Palestine, Russia’s war on Ukraine, to name but a few.”

“While it hosts SLB on the West Cambridge site, the University of Cambridge has blood on its hands too. A company like SLB has no place in our city - and it is time for the University of Cambridge to cut its ties by booting SLB off the West of Cambridge site,” they continued.

SLB and The University of Cambridge have been contacted for comment.