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Oil and Gas

After A Century, Oil And Gas Problems Persist On Navajo Lands

It’s a Saturday morning in late June and Garry Jay, a member of the Navajo Nation, pilots a white crew-cab Chevy pickup on a lumpy dirt road across the grasslands north of his house in Shiprock, New Mexico, heading for the round, wood-framed hogan his grandfather built by hand in the 1970s. His route weaves 20 miles among the hundreds of oil wells that dot Horseshoe Canyon as he chases the bittersweet memories of childhood weekends and summers 40 years ago in that house, on that land, with his grandparents. The family’s former winter sheep ranch sits at the base of a sharp cliff, five miles south of the Colorado border.

The Pentagon Is The Elephant In The Climate Activist Room

With nearly 10,000 people expected to take to the streets of New York City on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels, the climate justice movement seems more organized than ever. But, there’s a big elephant in the room, and it has the Pentagon written all over it. The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations combined and accounts for about one-third of America’s total fossil fuel consumption. The Department of Defense (DoD) also uses huge amounts of natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear power plants at its bases around the country.

Sanctions Failing: EU Imports More Russian Gas, China Beats US Tech War

Western sanctions are backfiring: The European Union is now importing Russian liquified natural gas at record levels, and China has made high-tech breakthroughs despite US export restrictions. Washington’s and Brussels’ economic warfare is, ironically, strengthening the economic sovereignty of Beijing and Moscow while blowing back on Europe. The world is living through a new cold war: Cold War Two. And one of the main ways in which this war has been waged is through economic means. Sanctions are the principal instrument of economic warfare. When they are imposed unilaterally by a country, without the support of the United Nations, they are referred to as “unilateral coercive measures” and are illegal according to international law.

Blackfeet Nation Statement On Badger-Two Medicine Court Settlement

Browning, Montana - The Blackfeet Nation has, since time immemorial, remained committed to protecting our sacred cultural lands in the Badger-Two Medicine. This area has forever been Blackfeet traditional territory, a place of refuge for our People. For decades, we have opposed plans to industrialize our cultural homeland. We want to acknowledge our many Blackfeet elders at the forefront of this struggle, who no longer are with us and who did not live to see the Badger-Two Medicine protected from development. We are grateful for their leadership. After these many years of struggle, our People are relieved that agreement finally has been reached between the U.S. government, tribal and conservation partner organizations, and the leaseholder—Solenex, LLC—to retire the last Badger-Two Medicine oil and gas lease.

Two Degrees Of Warming Could Cause One Billion Deaths Over Next Century

A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans. Many of the most powerful and profitable businesses on the planet are part of the oil and gas industry, which is both indirectly and directly responsible for over 40 percent of carbon emissions, which impact billions of lives in some of the world’s most remote communities that have the least resources, reported Western News.

Portland City Government Privately Compromised With Oil Industry

In the summer of 2022, it seemed that the days of an oil-by-rail facility in Portland, Oregon, were numbered. The previous year, the city had rejected a land use permit for a company called Zenith Energy, which receives crude oil shipped by rail from as far away as North Dakota. Zenith had appealed the decision, but had already suffered a string of defeats in the state.  Climate activists and community associations, who were concerned about the risks associated with oil-by-rail shipments, counted the city’s rejection of the permit as a major victory, and were tantalizingly close to prevailing over the company.

How Washington State Can Protect Workers At Oil Refineries

The grief hits Scott Campbell like a ton of bricks every time he walks into the union hall and sees the memorial to the fallen workers. Seven members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union reported for their shifts at the former Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington, on April 2, 2010, and never drove back out. They perished when a decades-old, structurally deficient piece of equipment called a heat exchanger exploded and caught fire in one of the worst industrial incidents in state history. Campbell and other members of USW Local 12-591 pay tribute to the seven with a laser focus on safety at the refinery, currently owned by Marathon.

EU Weans Itself From Russian Energy; US Pushes New LNG Export Plant

Chester, Pennsylvania — When Zulene Mayfield testifies next week against plans to build a $6.8 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in her Pennsylvania hometown, she will be facing off against some of the most powerful fossil fuel interests in the United States. As co-founder of the community group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, Mayfield has spent years fighting to protect her majority Black and low-income city from the pollution spewed by the nearby Covanta waste-to-energy facility — the country’s largest waste incinerator. Now she finds herself pitted against a new confluence of forces — a lobbying effort by a fossil fuel complex stretching from her state’s Marcellus Shale gas fields to the boardrooms of European energy companies. 

70 Years After Iranian Coup, The British Still Won’t Confess To Crimes

On Aug. 19, 1953, 70 years ago this week, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh—who had seized Iran’s vast oil fields from the British and put them under Iranian control—was removed from power in a coup organized and financed by the British and US governments. He was replaced by the dictatorial Shah, who immediately signed over 40% of Iran’s oil fields to US companies. The coup ushered in a long nightmare of repression, buttressed by Iran’s brutal secret police, SAVAK, trained and equipped by the CIA. The Shah not only crushed the democratic aspirations of Iranians, but enriched US oil companies and purchased billions of dollars of weapons from US weapons manufacturers.

Just Stop Oil: The Intersection Of The Four Horsemen And The Web Of Life

In Part 4 of this Frankly mini-series, Nate concludes the deep dive into the nexus between “just stopping oil” and “just pumping oil” with 10 guideposts which might help us to navigate through the intersection of the Four Horsemen of the 2020s and the shrinking Web of Life….together known as The Great Simplification.  From decomplexifying at various scales to a change of consciousness arising from more humans focused on “Inner Tech”, there are many ways we as individuals and as a part of the greater society can manage the push and pull of both environment and economic issues while remaining grounded in the reality of energy, technology, behavior, and the economy.

New Study Finds Fracking Is Linked To Seismic Tremors

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” is a process where shale and other types of impermeable rock are blasted open with water, “fracking fluid” and sand in order to access and extract oil and natural gas. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, fracking fluid contains chemical additives, the identities of which have often been shielded from disclosure on the basis that they are “confidential business information” or trade secrets. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified 1,084 different reported chemicals used in fracking from 2005 to 2013.

The New ‘Tanker War’ And US Military Escalation In The Persian Gulf

The last time the United States placed armament and military personnel, ready to fight, on ocean-going commercial vessels was during the world wars of the 20th Century. In World War II, the U.S. Navy organized an Armed Guard that served on merchant ships — an unpopular duty, given how the freighters to which the sailors were assigned represented targets for the enemy at least as much as any offensive capability to inflict significant damage in return. Hundreds of these merchant ships were sunk despite their Navy contingent aboard, and some 2,000 members of the Armed Guard died.

The US Plot To Finalize The Theft Of Venezuela’s Oil

It was always about the oil. United States assertions that the government of elected president Nicolas Maduro was illegitimate were always a ruse needed to get U.S. corporate hands on Venezuela’s oil company, CITGO. All the years of demonization, choosing an “interim president” who addressed congress and met with U.S. allies around the world, and collusion with the corporate media to spread war propaganda, were all part of a bipartisan heist that would make a gangster blush. Actually, the plot is the work of gangsters. Barack Obama began the process with the first tranche of sanctions against Venezuela.

Just Stop Oil ! What If We Didn’t Use Gasoline?

In this must watch Frankly, Nate illustrates how a reduction in the demand for gasoline will not – as commonly believed  – result in a 1:1 reduction in the demand for oil. This is contrary to a widespread perception, which much growth in the Electric Vehicle industry has been based on, about the correlation between a decline in gasoline usage resulting in an overall decline in oil production and CO2 emissions. While a significant portion of oil refining results in gasoline, we need to be aware of modern civilization’s deep dependencies on the remaining products that all come from the same barrel of oil.

A Wasted Opportunity To Hold Oil Executives To Account

A chummy interview of Chevron CEO Mike Wirth by CNBC‘s Andrew Ross Sorkin saw the goal of mitigating the devastating harms of climate disruption pitted against the evidently equally important goal of making Wirth more money. Conceding that many people around the world are desperate for an end to the fossil fuels driving the catastrophe, including supposedly Wirth himself, Sorkin added, “At the same time, I think it would be impossible for you not to want your business to grow.” So there’s your frame: the life and health of people and the planet on the one hand, endless corporate profiteering on the other. Only question is, how do we balance them?
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