BP Tar Sands protest, Oxford

Activists from Thames Valley Climate Action set up a demonstration in the centre of Oxford as part of a national campaign to pressurise British Petroleum into stopping its investments in tar sands. An oil pipeline was laid out along Cornmarket, and a pool of dirty water to illustrate the vast amounts of contaminated water that are generated by the tar sands oil extraction process was put on show.

The protest focussed on BP, which reneged on its "Beyond Petroleum" policy of investing in renewable energy and is currently in partnership with Husky, a Canadian company which owns a large area of tar sands in Alberta. The decision on whether to go ahead with oil extraction from the tar sands will be made in the next few months.

The energy required to extract oil from tar sands is many times greater than that required for conventional methods, and it also leads to massive scarring of the landscape and damage to the environment that is visible from space.