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Oil and Gas

Battle Over Jordan Cove Energy Project Is Over After Developers Pull Plug

The bitter and protracted battle over the Jordan Cove Energy Project has finally come to a close. The Calgary-based Pembina company formally asked federal energy regulators Wednesday to withdraw authorizations for the proposed pipeline and liquified natural gas export terminal in southwest Oregon. Pembina’s plan called for a 229-mile-long natural gas pipeline that would have run from Malin, Oregon, on the California border, over the Coast Range to Coos Bay. The gas would then have been super-cooled into a liquified form (LNG), loaded onto ships and exported to Asia. The proposal raised concerns about environmental impacts to waterways and wildlife habitat. It was also expected to become the largest single emitter of greenhouse gasses in Oregon.

Since Crude Export Ban Lifted, US Has Dropped ‘Climate Bomb’ On World

After Congress lifted a ban on crude exports in late 2015, oil and gas production in the Permian Basin soared while domestic consumption remained flat—leading to a massive build-out of pipelines and other infrastructure that culminated in the U.S. "flooding global markets" with fossil fuels at the expense of humanity, in general, and vulnerable Gulf Coast communities already overburdened by pollution, in particular. That's the focus of the third chapter of The Permian Basin Climate Bomb, a six-part multimedia report by Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law. The latest installment, released Wednesday, shows that the drilling and fracking boom that turned this area in the U.S. Southwest into "the world's single most prolific oil and gas field" over the past decade was not driven by rising domestic demand, but by a surge in exports after 2015.

Big Oil Pays $192 Million To Extract Fossil Fuels From The Gulf

The Biden administration went through with the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history Wednesday. In the controversial sale, major fossil-fuel companies including ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and BP bid a total of $192 million for the rights to drill a stretch of the Gulf of Mexico that is about double the size of Florida, The AP reported. The amount offered is the second-highest total since bidding resumed in the Gulf of Mexico in 2017. The Biden administration has been widely criticized for allowing the sale to proceed even after President Joe Biden promised U.S. climate action during the COP26 talks in Glasgow.

COP26 Negotiators Do Little To Cut Emissions

Many climate advocates and vulnerable nations entered this year’s conference hoping to address an enduring failure of the Paris Agreement, which said nothing about fossil fuels. But a draft agreement released on Saturday included only one reference, calling on parties to accelerate phasing out “unabated” coal consumption and “inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuels more broadly. Explicit references to oil and gas were absent.

Will The People With Guns Allow Our Planet To Breathe?

It is perhaps fitting that United States President Joe Biden arrived in Glasgow for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) on the climate catastrophe with eighty-five cars in tow months after declaring ‘I’m a car guy’ (for details on the climate catastrophe, see our Red Alert no. 11, ‘Only One Earth’). Only three countries in the world have more cars per person than the US, and these countries (Finland, Andorra, and Italy) have a much smaller population than the United States. Just before Biden left for the G20 summit, his meeting with Pope Francis, and COP26, he had his administration pressure the oil-producing states (OPEC+) to ‘do the needful when it comes to supply’ – namely to increase oil production.

Residents Speak Out Against Prince George Petrochemical Project

Opposition to a proposed petrochemical complex near Prince George, British Columbia, continues to build, with locals fearing environmental harms and environmental experts asking how such a project could proceed with the global climate on red alert. A council meeting in B.C.’s largest northern city grew heated last week as residents expressed “fierce criticism” about the C$5.6-billion petrochemical complex that Calgary-based West Coast Olefins (WCO) hopes to build outside of town, reports CBC News. Among attendees were members of a grassroots organization called Grasslands Not Gas Lands, which has collected 1,500 signatures to date on its petition calling for a “holistic review” of the project that would include public hearings.

Water Protectors Shut Down Line 3 Worksite

Floodwood, MN - On Saturday July 10th, water protectors stopped construction for a full day on an Enbridge worksite laying pipe for the Line 3 pipeline. Two water protectors locked to each other through the treads of a machine, while two others climbed up an excavator's arm, where they stayed for 7 hours. This action took place on Anishinaabe treaty territories in solidarity with leaders of the growing Indigenous-led resistance to Line 3.                                                                                         As these four water protectors stopped machinery, a large crowd gathered on the roadway in support, drumming, singing, and rallying in the summer heat. About 30 police officers from St. Louis, Carlton, and Aitkin counties responded, as well as State Troopers and a Fond Du Lac Tribal Officer.

Exxon’s Senate Puppets

Montana is a very long ways from the Senate chambers in Washington, D.C. Yet, like every other state, we send two senators to represent us in what used to be called “the greatest deliberative body on earth.” We are continually flooded with self-congratulatory press releases promising they’re “fighting for Montana.” But a sad reality was revealed in last week’s bombshell news that Montana’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Republican U.S. Steve Daines were named by Keith McCoy, Exxon’s senior director of federal relations in Washington, as two of 11 senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil. In truth, it appears our senators are actually “fighting” for the oil and gas industry, not the 1 million Montanans counting on them for Senate representation.

Diane Wilson In Hunger Strike To Protect Matagorda Bay

Legendary environmenal activist Diane Wilson has been called “an unreasonable woman.” As a shrimper, Diane learned firsthand about tremendous pollution damaging the waters near her hometown of Port Lavaca and fought to defend the Bay from Formosa and Alcoa, major chemical companies. In 2019, Diane was plaintiff to a court case brought against Formosa on account of the shocking amount of plastic pollution – called nurdles – that Diane found littered around the Bay. That case resulted in a $50 million settlement against the company that is being used for environmental projects. Now, as of May 5th, Diane is on Day 29 of a hunger strike protesting the dredging of the Matagorda Ship Channel, a channel first dredged in the 1960s to provide a means for ships to travel between the Gulf of Mexico and the industry along Lavaca Bay.

Women Run 415 Miles To Protest The Mountain Valley Pipeline

Bent Mountain, VA - The Mountain Valley Pipeline protest community came together Sunday at the Bent Mountain Center to thank and commend three women who are running and cycling alongside the MVP construction path. MVP protesters held a feast to celebrate the women who are running and cycling 415 miles from West Virginia to Virginia, paralleling the pipeline. “We’re all runners, so to be able to take something that we enjoy to be able to raise awareness to the issues that are happening, it’s important to us,” MVP protest runner Katie Thompson said. Sarah Hodder, Merecedes Walters and Thompson started their 10-day relay-style running and cycling journey April 24 and as of Sunday, May 2, have two days left.

The Radioactive Underbelly Of The Oilfield

In towns and cities across northern Appalachia industrial and manufacturing jobs have emptied out and men and women hungry for work have been drawn by the beckoning call of the oil and gas industry. Over the past decade that industry has tapped vigorously into the Marcellus and Utica, two massively rich gas layers that underlie the region. But these workers don’t always end up drilling for oil and pulling pipe, wellhead jobs stamped with a certain gritty glamour upon the American imagination. They often end up at a far seedier and even less regulated end of the oilfield, working in the largely unknown underworld of radioactive oilfield waste. Scooping it up and hauling it hither and thither in trucks. 

Pipeline Protesters Charged With ‘Felony Kidnapping,’ Held Without Bond

Maybrook, VA — On Friday 4/30/21 at 10:30 AM, Mountain Valley Pipeline protester Thomas Adams blocked a pipe truck just before it crossed a bridge over Sinking Creek in Giles County, and locked himself to the underside of the truck. The bridge is less than two miles away from the site where the pipeline is slated to cross the creek (although MVP currently lacks the permits to do so). A rally of over a dozen people gathered to support Thomas at the scene. Signs and banners on site read, “Save the Planet, Stop the MVP,” “MVP Just Give Up,” “Not Here, Not Anywhere,” and “Doom to the Pipeline.” At 1 PM, after 2.5 hours blockading the pipe truck, Thomas was extracted and arrested. Another person on site, Molly, who had been at the support rally, was also arrested.

Despite Climate Commitments, Health Concerns, States Approve Fuel Tanks

Magali Sanchez-Hall, usually in motion, pauses for a moment on the sidewalk to gaze through a chain-link fence at the massive new construction project: tanks shaped like giant tuna fish cans that will store crude oil. The Los Angeles refinery has been her troublesome neighbor for a quarter of a century, but she finds this latest turn particularly perplexing. “Right now, we are supposed to be moving to clean energy,” she says. Sanchez-Hall, 50, raised her children here before getting a master’s degree in public policy. When Tesoro, now Marathon Petroleum Corp., first proposed the new tanks in 2016, she opposed them, citing sickening fumes from the ones already there.

Second Tree Sitter Extracted On Final Day Of Yellow Finch Blockade

On Wednesday, March 24th, 2021, the second and final tree sitter at the Yellow Finch blockade in the path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline was extracted and arrested. This follows the Tuesday arrest of another tree sitter, and marks the final day — day 932 — of the Yellow Finch blockade.  After Tuesday’s extraction, police remained on site overnight, shining spotlights at the remaining tree sit. MVP began work again this morning around 7 a.m. By 8 a.m., a rally of local supporters had formed nearby. Around 10 a.m., the large crane that police had brought on site began moving towards the remaining tree sitter, and around 12 p.m. they were cut from the lockbox that they had used to lock themself to the tree, extracted, and arrested. 

Coalition To Governor Wolf: No Sacrifice Zones In Pennsylvania

Today, Governor Tom Wolf voted with the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin and to remove from consideration regulations that would have allowed the transfer of water from the basin to fracking operations elsewhere and the importing of fracking wastewater for treatment, processing, storage, or disposal. We congratulate our allies who have fought for this ban for 11 years and worked to stop the additional regulations proposed in 2017. The reasons cited for today’s decision include the rapidly growing body of peer-reviewed science on the adverse impacts of shale gas development and evidence of the harms done in areas outside the basin for more than a decade.
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