About a dozen Greenpeace activists demonstrated outside Paris's Georges Pompidou museum on Saturday (October 2), smearing themselves with a black oil-like substance, to condemn the world's dependency on oil.

Activists covered in the black substance stood frozen in front of a colourful fountain, holding large globes and banners, as onlookers took pictures of the peculiar sight.

"To say stop to the new forms of exploitation and to encourage more investment in renewable energy. A moratorium on finding new ways of oil exploitation," said Cecile, a Greenpeace activist.

"We realise we haven't learnt a lesson from the consequences of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and we think it is important to mobilise so the government takes us out from this addiction to oil," said another activist, Anne Valet.

A similar demonstration took place in 14 other cities in France on Saturday in an attempt to alert the French about the consequences of the world's reliance on petrol and to the subsequent environmental risks.