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Oil and Gas

Outgoing Biden Administration Approves Oil And Gas Lease In Alaska

December 11, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , ,
The approval of plans for an oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the outgoing Biden administration on Monday will keep the door open for drilling in the pristine wildlands. The sale, to be held on January 9, will include a smaller portion of the total land that was made available for bidding about four years ago during the Trump administration, reported The Associated Press. “Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward,” said attorney for Earthjustice Erik Grafe, who has been a leader in litigation to protect the wildlife refuge, in a press release from Earthjustice.

You’re Already On Strike; How to Turn Up the Heat

November 28, 2024 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities. Workers have handbilled gas stations, as well as sometimes following Marathon trucks and picketing them when they make deliveries. They’ve gotten support from the Detroit City Council and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, as well as other unions like the UAW who have joined their picket lines.

No Coal No Gas Builds On Recent Victory With Focus On Community

October 6, 2024 Siobhan Senier, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , ,
David Graeber once posited that “the biggest problem facing nonviolent direct action movements is that we don’t know how to handle victory.” He observed that, by the time activists recognize some of our initial successes, those gains tend to be obscured by infighting and/or repressive backlash. More to the point, he said, activists unsatisfied with anything short of a total revolution miss the steady gains that our movements make. A New England-based campaign to phase out fossil fuels provides a helpful counter-example. Activists with No Coal No Gas, or NCNG, have shown that we do know how to handle victory.

Citibank Is Bankrolling The Largest Offshore Oil Facility In The US

October 3, 2024 Sue Page, In These Times. , , , , ,
On an early morning this September, I stood in front of the headquarters of Citibank, chanting and singing as 31 activists were dragged away by police for blocking the building’s entrance. I’m a retired teacher and a grandmother living in Texas. How did I wind up helping lead this action in New York City? Over the past three months, organizers have engaged in the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, the largest sustained civil disobedience campaign in the climate movement’s history. For the past twelve weeks this summer, more than 5,000 people — from faith leaders to scientists, from students to grandparents — have taken to the streets, demanding that Wall Street banks end their funding of climate chaos. That’s how I ended up rallying at Citibank’s doorsteps.

Why Does The US Still Control Every Penny Of Iraqi Oil Revenues?

September 28, 2024 Hussein Askary, Orinoco Tribune. , , , ,
In July, the Iraqi Central Bank halted all foreign transactions in Chinese Yuan, succumbing to intense pressure from the US Federal Reserve to do so. The shutdown followed a brief period during which Baghdad had allowed merchants to trade in Yuan, an initiative intended to mitigate excessive US restrictions on Iraq’s access to US dollars. While this Yuan-based trade excluded Iraq’s oil exports, which remained in US dollars, Washington viewed it as a threat to its financial dominance over the Persian Gulf state. But how has the US managed to exert such total control over Iraqi financial policies? The answer lies in 2003, with mechanisms established following the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq.

Marathon Oil Teamsters Strike

September 22, 2024 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
For the first time in 30 years, Teamsters at the Marathon oil refinery in Detroit are on strike. Close to 300 workers walked out September 4. Welders, firefighters, and heavy equipment operators in the union are demanding a raise that keeps up with cost of living, along with better hours. Above all, refinery Teamsters are trying to win a guarantee against outsourcing and to strengthen their union for the future. Although Michigan repealed its "right-to-work" law in 2022, Marathon managers are refusing a clause that requires every worker covered by the contract to pay their share, and they have aggressively expanded subcontracting with non-union labor.

Baltimore Lawsuit Alleges Shale Investments Fueled Price Fixing Scheme

August 27, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
The city of Baltimore filed a class action lawsuit on Saturday, alleging that major U.S. shale drillers colluded to fix oil prices, the latest in a series of lawsuits filed this year claiming that U.S. oil producers conspired with each other and with OPEC to drive oil prices up. The new lawsuit, filed by the mayor of Baltimore and its city council, is notable in part because it alleges Wall Street investment firms played a role by pressuring shale drillers to coordinate their output to prevent fueling price wars with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other oil producers abroad. Wall Street companies were among the largest investors in multiple competing shale producers at the same time — and pushed them all to engage in “capital discipline,” the lawsuit alleges.

Judge Orders Increased Protection Of Marine Species From Oil Drilling

August 22, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
At the urging of Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other green groups, a United States federal judge has thrown out a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assessment governing how threatened and endangered marine species like whales and sea turtles ought to be protected from oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Maryland district court struck down the assessment — known under the Endangered Species Act as a “biological opinion” — which was required to ensure that endangered and threatened species would not be jeopardized by exploration and drilling for fossil fuels in the Gulf, a press release from Sierra Club said.

Fire Reveals How Oil Industry Environmental ‘Solution’ Spurs Climate Crisis

August 14, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , ,
The trouble began at Piñon Midstream’s Dark Horse Treating Plant in Jal, New Mexico, on November 25, 2023, with an unexpected loud “pop” in the early afternoon, the company would later tell state regulators. A poisonous mix of flammable gasses hissed out from a pipeline feeding into the plant. Within a minute, a worker radioed in to the plant’s control room that a dense cloud of vapor had enveloped part of the plant. Within two minutes, Dark Horse was ablaze in what the company would later call an “intense and sustained fire.” Within 15 minutes, more pipes ripped open, and a towering fireball tore through the plant.

Battle For Syria’s Oil Pits Local Tribal Forces Against US Occupation

August 9, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , ,
In Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, Arab tribal forces have mounted a determined assault on the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), aiming to reclaim their lands and challenge the U.S.’s de facto control over Syria’s oil-rich regions. The U.S. responded with missile strikes, underscoring the fragile hold Washington maintains over these critical resources, which have been central to its leverage in the ongoing Syrian conflict. This escalation followed the arrest of Arab commander Abu Khawla by the SDF in August 2023 during an anti-Daesh (ISIS) operation in al-Hasakah. The arrest ignited over a month of armed clashes between Arab forces and the SDF, leading to the deaths of approximately 118 people, including ten civilians.

International Campaign Targets Tanker Supplying Israel With Texas Oil

August 6, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
An oil tanker scheduled to carry 300,000 barrels of military-grade jet fuel to Israel has been prevented from docking in Spain and Gibraltar following pressure from activists. The oil is expected to be used in Israeli Air Force’s F16 and F35 jets as part of the country’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The Overseas Santorini was supposed to dock in Gibraltar on July 30, but it did not stop and is currently traveling northeast in the Mediterranean. It’s unclear if the failure to dock was connected to the protests. Gibraltar confirmed that the vessel requested to stop and an official told the Gibraltar Chronicle that no services were supplied to the tanker.

Four Just Stop Oil Supporters Arrested By Greater Manchester Police

August 5, 2024 Just Stop Oil. , , ,
Four Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested after an operation by the Greater Manchester Police. In recent weeks Just Stop Oil has been taking nonviolent action with groups internationally to demand governments establish a Fossil Fuel Treaty, to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. [1] A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said: Just Stop Oil supporters are always fully accountable for our actions and as such the four arrested today will accept any legal consequences. Accountability is a core feature of nonviolence, which is at the centre of Just Stop Oil’s mission. We take action because we want a safe and stable society. Delivering a Fossil Fuel Treaty that ends oil and gas by 2030 is an essential step for our Government to prevent massive disorder.

NYC Protesters Target AIG Over East African Crude Oil Pipeline

July 27, 2024 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. , , , , , , ,
The "Summer of Heat" continues—both in terms of record-breaking temperatures driven by fossil fuels and a series of nonviolent direct actions targeting Wall Street for its contributions to the climate emergency. After protests last month calling out Citibank for "financing the arsonists," climate campaigners on Friday set their sights on finance and insurance giant AIG for "stubbornly" refusing to join over two dozen other insurers that won't cover the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). EACOP is set to run nearly 900 miles from Uganda's Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Rights groups have sounded the alarm about how the project has devastated the lives and livelihoods of people in its path as well as violence endured by African activists, who have been "kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to different forms of harassment."

Big Oil Rallies To Obstruct Accountability

July 20, 2024 Emily Sanders, DeSmog. , , , , , , , , , , ,
In the face of mounting scrutiny from local, state, and federal officials, fossil fuel companies and their allies are deploying a range of tactics to obstruct ongoing lawsuits and investigations concerning evidence that the industry has misled the public about the harms it knew its products would cause to the climate, environment, and human health. Far-right industry allies with ties to Chevron have mounted an “unprecedented” pressure campaign calling on the Supreme Court to stop a potentially historic climate deception lawsuit against oil majors from going to trial. Republican attorneys general are separately urging the Supreme Court to throw out similar climate fraud lawsuits from five states.

California Regulators Refuse To Enforce New Orphan Well Rules

July 18, 2024 Joe Fassler, DeSmog. , , , ,
As two of California’s largest oil and gas companies join by corporate merger, state regulators are declining to apply tough new rules governing the transfer of defunct oil and gas wells, DeSmog has learned. But a growing chorus of California legislators say that nonenforcement stance violates a groundbreaking law they fought to pass just months ago — and they, along with dozens of environmental groups, are demanding that regulators change course. “They’re just ignoring the statute,” Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “We need the governor to step in and tell the agency to follow the law,” she added
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