Oil & Gas

Indigenous Activists Reach Westminster Shell Investor Meeting

May 22, 2015 UK Tar Sands Network, www.no-tar-sands.org Resist! Indigenous Women, Oil & Gas, Seattle, shell, United Kingdom (UK)

Today, under the shadow of Big Ben, a delegation of indigenous women was joined by campaigners to protest Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. Mae Hank and Faith Gemmill-Fredson travelled to Shell’s Annual General meetings in the Netherlands and London directly after taking action in Seattle last Saturday on a mass “flotilla” where kayaktivists blocked Shell’s Polar Pioneer drilling rig docked at the Port. At the shareholders meeting in London handmade black origami “roses of resistance” were laid at the entrance by UK Tar Sands Network and Platform to demand an end to the expansion of the Canadian tar sands and the exploitation of people in Nigeria plus standing with communities resisting Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic this summer. A box of resistance roses were hand delivered to the Shell board.

Kinder Morgan Paid PA Police Department To ‘Deter Protests’

May 22, 2015 Adam Federman, www.earthisland.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Environment, Law Enforcement, Oil & Gas

Between June and October 2013, Kinder Morgan, the largest energy infrastructure company in North America, paid a local Pennsylvania police department more than $50,000 to patrol a controversial pipeline upgrade. The company requested that the officers, though officially off-duty, be in uniform and marked cars. Kinder Morgan’s aim, according to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, was to use law enforcement to “deter protests” in order to avoid “costly delays.” Kinder Morgan sought off-duty police officers to “deter protests" and avoid delay of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline upgrade. It’s unclear if the police department instructed its officers to explicitly “deter protests” but, if officers carried out Kinder Morgan’s request, their conduct would clearly violate the First Amendment rights of protesters.

Week Of Protests Gets Under Way At FERC

May 22, 2015 John Zangas and Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Environment, FERC, Oil & Gas

About 30 activists from as far away as New Mexico rallied today in the first of a series of protests at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC, they say, harms thousands of people through the pipelines and gas infrastructure projects it approves. Carrying signs and banners, they picketed FERC headquarters. Dozens of heavily armed Federal Protective Service officers erected barricades and were stationed at the doors and a carport entryway. “We’re here at FERC because they systematically destroy communities basically by making their local community rights null and void,” said Jimmy Betts of Beyond Extreme Energy, the coalition group which organized the protest. He called FERC’s actions “communicide.”

Santa Barbara Oil Spill Spurred Environmental Movement

May 22, 2015 John Antczak and Matthew Brown, www.AP.org Educate! California, Environment, Oil & Gas, Oil Spill

The latest oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast is just a drop in the bucket compared with the area's catastrophic blowout in 1969, but it has become a new rallying point for environmentalists in their battle against drilling and fossil fuels. No one expects damage on the order of the '69 disaster, which helped give rise to the modern environmental movement and led to passage of some of the nation's most important environmental laws. Nevertheless, the new spill from a ruptured underground pipe is being held up as another reason to oppose such things as fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas, the moving of crude by train, and drilling in far-flung places.

9 Days Of Protest To Expose FERC

May 21, 2015 Anne Meador and John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Environment, FERC, Fracking, Law, Oil & Gas

Several days of protests are about to kick off in Washington, DC in response to the increasing toll which hydraulic fracking is taking on communities in the United States and the global climate. A coalition group called Beyond Extreme Energy has planned direct actions on the doorstep of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which approves construction of interstate gas pipelines, compressor stations, gas storage facilities and other infrastructure around the country. On weekdays from May 21 to 29, the protests, called “FERCus,” will highlight the agency’s sham process of evaluating infrastructure projects, which always favors industry. People in communities affected by these projects say that their voices aren’t heard, and that FERC disregards the consequences to their health and safety while abusing powers of eminent domain.

Chevron Shareholders: ‘Stop Spending On Elections’

May 20, 2015 Bri Holmes, www.truth-out.org/ Resist! California, Democracy, Oil & Gas

I was born and raised in California, and never have I heard someone say that we need more corporate money funneled into our elections. If you spoke with Californians from Los Angeles to Eureka, it's unlikely anyone would willingly surrender our democracy to special interest groups, let alone to a major corporation like Chevron. And if you spoke with the people of Richmond, California, who were outspent by Chevron nearly 20-to-1 in the last election cycle, they would tell you about the hard-won fight for their democracy. In 2014, Chevron dumped more than $3 million into municipal elections in a town of 107,000 in an attempt to select pro-industry candidates to the City Council and mayor's office. They rolled the dice and lost.

Texas Fears Fracking Democracy Bans Local Ordinances

May 20, 2015 Earthworks | Denton Drilling Awareness Group | Earthjustice | Natural Resources Defense Council, www.earthworksaction.org Resist! Community, Law, Oil & Gas, Texas

Today Texas Governor Abbott signed HB 40 into law. Written by former ExxonMobil lawyer Shannon Ratliff, the statute forces every Texas municipality wanting common sense limits on oil and gas development to demonstrate its rules are “commercially reasonable”. It effectively overturns a Denton ballot initiative banning fracking that passed last November. “HB 40 was written by the oil and gas industry, for the oil and gas industry, to prevent voters from holding the oil and gas industry accountable for its impacts,” said Earthworks’ Texas organizer Sharon Wilson. Wilson, who played a key role in the Denton ballot initiative, continued, “It was the oil and gas industry’s contempt for impacted residents that pushed Denton voters to ban fracking in the first place. And now the oil and gas industry, through state lawmakers, has doubled down by showing every city in Texas that same contempt.”

sHellNo Protesters Slow Work At Oil Rig With Mass Blockade

May 19, 2015 Hal Bernton, www.seattletimes.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Oil & Gas, Seattle, shell

The Terminal 5 protest against Shell’s massive Polar Pioneer oil rig ended peacefully Monday afternoon as protesters vacated gates they had sought to block. “We’re going to end today together and united as we have been through this whole process,” said Ahmed Gaya, one of the organizers, to several hundred protesters. By the time the protesters left, police officers had secured control of a main gate, using their bikes to form a line across the roadway. The decision to end the protest came out of meetings among protest organizers. There was concern that if they stayed longer, their numbers might dwindle. They determined to leave as a group.

How Indigenous Kayactivists Protest Against Shell

May 19, 2015 Sydney Brownstone, www.thestranger.com Resist! indigenous, Oil & Gas, Resistance, Seattle, Transportation

It was hard to miss. Draped over the boardwalk at Jack Block Park on Saturday, a 300-square-foot cutout of a solemn face looked out over the water-based protest against the Polar Pioneer, the Arctic drilling rig floating in Elliott Bay. "Chief Seattle is watching," it read. Looking at the sign probably made some people uncomfortable. Seattle is named after the Duwamish-Suquamish Chief Seattle, and his profile is plastered all over official letterheads and various pieces of Northwest kitsch. Still, sloganizing the face of a man who helped "Seattle" exist—in that he signed a treaty in 1855 giving over 54,000 acres of land to the federal government in exchange for an unfulfilled promise of treaty rights and a reservation for his descendants—can feel like a grotesque kind of tokenism when, often, there are no native people present to explain what it means.

David Suzuki: ‘People Have The Power To Bring About Change’

May 18, 2015 David Suzuki, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Canada, Environment, First Nations, Oil & Gas

Recent events in Canada have shown not only that change is possible, but that people won’t stand for having corporate interests put before their own. When plummeting oil prices late last year threw Alberta into financial crisis, people rightly asked, “Where’s the money?” They could see that an oil producer like Norway was able to weather the price drop thanks to forward planning, higher costs to industry to exploit resources and an oil fund worth close to $1 trillion! Leading up to the election, the government that ran Alberta for 44 years refused to consider raising industry taxes or reviewing royalty rates, instead offering a budget with new taxes, fees and levies for citizens, along with service cuts.

Indigenous Group Rejects $1 Billion For Gas Project

May 16, 2015 Ian Austen, www.nytimes.com Resist! Canada, Capitalism, Environment, First Nations, Oil & Gas

A small aboriginal community in British Columbia has rejected a $1 billion payment for a natural gas project, the latest setback for the Canadian energy industry’s effort to bolster exports. A group led by the Malaysian energy company Petronas had offered the money to the Lax Kw’alaams Band, to help push through a plan to build a liquefied natural gas ship terminal near their remote community. It is part of an overall pipeline and gas drilling project that the group, Pacific NorthWest LNG, values at 36 billion Canadian dollars. The community, which has about 3,600 members, has consistently rejected the plan over concerns that it would harm fish habitats, particularly for salmon. After six public meetings over the issue, the band council voted against the payment.

Shell Oil Rig Docks In Seattle

May 15, 2015 Alison Morrow, Amy Moreno, and Alex Rozier, www.king5.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Seattle, Transportation

A 400-foot-long offshore oil drilling rig pulled by tugs arrived in Seattle Thursday afternoon, despite environmentalists' protests and the city's opposition to letting it dock here. The Polar Pioneer arrived in Elliott Bay at about 1:50 p.m. after a 12-hour journey from Port Angeles. It made its way through the Duwamish River toward Harbor Island and docked at Terminal 5 around 5 p.m. The Polar Pioneer is one of two drill rigs petroleum giant Royal Dutch Shell plans to park at leased space from Maritime Foss at the Port of Seattle, where it will load its Arctic drilling rigs and other vessels with supplies and personnel. It is preparing to explore for oil this summer in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast.

Enbridge Fined $75 Million For Oil Spill In Michigan

May 15, 2015 Ed White, www.thestar.com Resist! Environment, Law, Oil & Gas

Enbridge Energy, the Toronto company responsible for one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history will restore or create 120 hectares of wetlands as part of a sweeping agreement to improve the Kalamazoo River watershed in southwestern Michigan, state officials said. A settlement between the state and Enbridge Energy filed in Calhoun County court Tuesday, nearly five years after a broken pipeline released more than three million litres of oil, requires the company to continue to monitor the impacts of the spill on the environment. The company also agreed to spend $75 million U.S., much of it on various projects, including a dam removal and improved access to boating and fishing on the river. Some have been finished.

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