Oil & Gas

Direct Action To Block Shell’s Seattle Operations

May 13, 2015 Jennifer Baker, www.revolution-news.com Educate! Environment, Oil & Gas, Seattle, shell

Days after the Foss Maritime announced that they intended to defy Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and illegally host Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet, Seattle activists have blockaded Shell’s Seattle fuel transfer station by erecting a tripod. Seattle resident Annie Lukins, who is suspended from the top of the tripod, says she made the decision to block the facility because like everyone who lives near the shore, she has a stake in stopping Shell. “Shell already knows the impacts of drilling in the arctic. They are placing themselves in defiance of climate science, in defiance of the treaty subsistence rights of the Inupiat, and in defiance of our elected official here in Seattle. I’m here because I’m not the only young person who wants to raise her children near the shore.

Groups Sue To Stop Oil Firms From Injecting Industrial Waste Into Water Supply

May 12, 2015 Samantha Page, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! California, Environment, Oil & Gas, Water

Against the backdrop of California’s historic drought, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Thursday demanding that the state stop allowing oil industry wastewater to be injected into protected, clean aquifers. In response to an investigation showing the California Department of Conservation has been allowing oil companies to inject waste into clean water sources for years, the department, named in the suit, only issued a“emergency rulemaking action” that allows the wastewater injections to continue until 2017. The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, asks that the action be invalidated and that the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources be forced to immediately stop the continued wastewater injections. “Everyone agrees they are illegally operating injection wells,” Center for Biological Diversity attorney Hollin Kretzmann told ThinkProgress. “The Safe Drinking Water Act is clear and prohibits this type of activity.”

Judge Halts Work On Pipeline Due To Environmental Concerns

May 9, 2015 Katie Valentine, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas

Construction on a natural gas pipeline set to run through Maryland has been halted after a judge found that the state hadn’t done enough to protect the environment and hadn’t given residents enough of a chance to weigh in on the project. Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Judge Justin J. King ruled last week that the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) must go back and revise the permit it issued for the 21-mile pipeline, which is being constructed by Columbia Pipeline Group and is slated to run through Baltimore and Harford counties. According to the judge’s ruling, the permit’s water safety requirements were too general, “rendering it impossible for this court to determine whether the permit complies with state and federal water quality regulations.”

Living The Indigenous Way, From The Jungles To The Mountains

May 8, 2015 Stephen Leahy, www.ipsnews.net Create! Environment, indigenous, Oil & Gas

“Living well is all about keeping good relations with Mother Earth and not living by domination or extraction." -- Victoria Tauli Corpuz, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples But as the fingers of economic development reach into ever more distant corners of the globe, many of these communities find themselves – and their way of life – under threat. The march of progress means that efforts are being made both to extract the resources on which these communities rely and to ‘mainstream’ indigenous groups by introducing Western medical, educational and economic systems into traditional ways of life. “There are two uncontacted communities near my home but there is the threat of oil exploration. They don’t want this. For them, taking the oil out of the ground is like taking blood out of their bodies,” Moi Enomenga, a Waorani who was born into an uncontacted community, told IPS.

Groups Appeal Feds Approval Of Cove Point Fracked Gas Export Facility

May 8, 2015 Kelly Trout, www.chesapeakeclimate.org Resist! Environment, FERC, Law, Oil & Gas

Environmental groups sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today over its decision to approve a massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal along the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland without conducting a rigorous environmental review. The lawsuit, filed in the federal appeals court for the D.C. Circuit, charges that FERC circumvented the law by failing to consider how Dominion Resources’ $3.8 billion Cove Point project would trigger expanded fracking for natural gas in the Marcellus shale region, leading to significant new amounts of air, water and climate-disrupting pollution. Additionally, the groups contend that FERC failed to adequately consider the impact of foreign ships dumping dirty wastewater into the Chesapeake Bay. Earthjustice filed the suit today on behalf of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Patuxent Riverkeeper, and Sierra Club.

South Dakota Tribes Form Alliance To Battle Keystone XL Plan

May 7, 2015 Indianz, www.indianz.com Educate! indigenous, Oil & Gas, South Dakota

South Dakota tribes are working with non-Indians in an effort to stop the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline from crossing their state. TransCanada, the company behind the project, received a conditional permit from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission in February 2010. But since construction did not begin within four years, the 313-mile route must be re-certified. That's when tribes and their allies stepped in. They are fighting the re-certification out of concern for their water, the environment and treaty lands.

California Agriculture May No Longer Be Safe For Human Consumption

May 7, 2015 Natasha Geiling, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! California, Farmworkers, Food and Agriculture, Oil & Gas

As California farmers face a fourth year of the state’s historic drought, they’re finding water in unexpected places — like Chevron’s Kern River oil field, which has been selling recycled wastewater from oil production to farmers in California’s Kern County. Each day, Chevron recycles and sells 21 million gallons of wastewater to farmers, which is then applied on about 10 percent of Kern County’s farmland. And while some praise the program as a model for dealing with water shortages, environmental groups are raising concerns about the water’s safety, according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. Tests conducted by Water Defense, an environmental group founded by actor Mark Ruffalo in 2010, have found high levels of acetone and methylene chloride — compounds that can be toxic to humans — in wastewater from Chevron used for irrigation purposes. The tests also found the presence of oil, which is supposed to be removed from the wastewater during recycling.

Revealed: Alberta’s Ploy To Break First Nations’ Pipeline Opposition

April 30, 2015 Martin Lukacs, www.theguardian.com Resist! Canada, First Nations, Oil & Gas

The Alberta government escalated its campaign to build tar sands pipelines under Premier Jim Prentice by seeking to have First Nations become full-blown proponents of the projects in return for oil revenues. Documents obtained by the Guardian show that under a proposed agreement the province would have funded a task force of Alberta First Nations and government officials to “work jointly on removing bottlenecks and enabling the construction of pipelines to tide-water in the east and west coasts.” The push was part of a broader diplomatic offensive launched by Progressive Conservative Premier Jim Prentice after he came to power in late 2014, making approval of pipelines his highest priority. Prentice is currently struggling to win re-election.

Shell Has Not Learned From Its Mistakes

April 27, 2015 Haley Rabic, www.greenpeaceblogs.org Educate! Environment, Greenpeace, Oil & Gas, shell

Shell’s fleet entered the Arctic for exploratory drilling in the summer of 2012 with two rigs, the Kulluk and Noble Discoverer, both owned by Noble Drilling. Challenges started early for the Noble Discoverer — in early July the rig might have ran aground during a storm, but the Coast Guard cleared the ship to move on. The voyage was halted for months as Shell waited for its spill response equipment dome that would never come — during a calm water sea-trial in the Puget Sound the containment dome shot to the surface, sank 120 feet and was“crushed like a beer can.” Instead of stopping, Shell persisted and changed its plans from drilling for oil to only sinking a partial well.

Thank You, Climate Hero

April 27, 2015 Faith Meckley, www.theithacan.org Resist! Cove Point, Environment, Oil & Gas

On April 20th, Heather Doyle plead guilty to her actions at Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export terminal in Lusby, Maryland on Feb. 3, in which she trespassed onto a construction site and scaled the arm of a crane to drop a banner that read, “Dominion get out. Don’t frack Maryland. No gas exports. Save Cove Point.” Doyle, 31, did not accept probation and instead chose to go to jail. Judge John E. Nunn of the Calvert County Court sentenced Doyle 40 days, which she is now serving. In his statement the judge said he was sympathetic to the environmental movement, but did not understand why Doyle and her fellow crane-climber, Carling Sothoron, needed to scale construction equipment to make their point.

Protesters Gatecrash Exhibition Launch Over ‘Stolen Culture’

April 22, 2015 BP or Not BP, www.bp-or-not-bp.org Resist! Australia, culture, indigenous, Museum, Oil & Gas, United Kingdom (UK)

At 10.30am this morning the official media launch of the British Museum’s new BP-sponsored exhibition, “Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation”, was interrupted by an unexpected theatrical protest. A group of “actorvists” from BP or not BP?, dressed as robbers in striped T-shirts and eyemasks, temporarily blocked the exhibition entrance with a banner reading “Stolen Land, Stolen Culture, Stolen Climate”and read out quotes from Aboriginal leaders and activists, in front of a crowd of journalists waiting to get in. The protest highlighted concerns that the British legacy of taking Aboriginal land, objects and resources without permission continues today and is perpetuated by elements of the exhibition and by its sponsor, BP.

The Fight For Justice For Ecuador’s Amazon Continues

April 21, 2015 Lindsay Ofrias, www.upsidedownworld.org Resist! Amazon, Ecuador, Environment, Oil & Gas

Amazonian residents cite various peer-reviewed health evaluations demonstrating significantly higher rates of cancer, miscarriages, birth defects, and skin diseases, among a multitude of other health problems for those living in the region as evidence of them being poisoned. Those studies show that the health problems are even more acute for those living nearby the 300 or so oil well sites of the former Texaco concession of which PetroEcuador also had a hand in. For local residents who have witnessed the growth of the Amazonian oil industry over the last half-century, they are confident of it being the arrival of Texaco that marks the gradual destruction of their once clean land and water resources. The fact that Texaco ominously renamed the burgeoning oil frontier town of its Amazonian heyday to Sour Lake (Lago Agrio in Spanish) as homage to its corporate birthplace in Texas has not helped to alter that widely held view.

6 Arrested At BP HQ In Week Of Action For Gulf Oil Spill Anniversary

April 17, 2015 Anastasia Pantsios, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Oil Spill, Protest

On April 20, 2010 BP’s offshore oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers, causing the largest oil spill ever in U.S. waters and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. It impacted wildlife and people, caused health problems from exposure to oil and dispersants, and decimated oyster, shellfish and finfish populations and damaged livelihoods and economies in towns dependent on fisheries. Five years later, much oil remains in the Gulf, but no one is sure how much. BP has fought in court to minimize its responsibility. Kicking off a week of events marking the fifth anniversary of that event—with the damage to the environment and the ecosystem of the Gulf region still being added up—activists occupied BP headquarters in Houston.

In Midst Of Oil Spill, Vancouver To Go 100% Renewable

April 12, 2015 Natasha Geiling, www.nationofchange.org Create! Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas, Renewable Energy

There’s some mixed news coming out of Vancouver, Canada this week. On the one hand, the city announced at an international sustainability summit that it would commit to using 100 percent renewable energy to power its electricity, transportation, heating and air conditioning within 20 years. On the other hand, Vancouver is also dealing with a fuel spill in the waters of English Bay that is washing up on beaches and threatening wildlife. On March 26, Vancouver’s city council voted unanimously to approve Mayor Gregor Robertson motion calling for a long-term commitment to deriving all of the city’s energy from renewable sources. At the ICLEI World Congress 2015 this week in Seoul, South Korea, the city went a step further, committing to reaching that goal of 100 percent renewable electricity, transportation, heating and air conditioning by 2030 or 2035.

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