Oil & Gas

Why I Climbed Shell’s 100 Meter High Oil Rig

April 9, 2015 Greenpeace Staff, www.greenpeaceblogs.org Resist! Environment, Greenpeace, Oil & Gas, shell

This isn’t just a protest against Shell drilling in the Arctic. I didn’t make the decision to do this ambitious act in a zen-style instant of clarity. For me, taking action like this comes from a deep frustration with something that is bigger than me. And after years of feeling deeply disheartened and completely powerless, I finally found the conviction to step up. Becoming an adult in the tweens of the 21st century, I was a witness to the abundance of reports that spelled out the gravity of climate change. When I started studying environmental science in 2012, I began to comprehend the magnitude and complexity with which climate change will affect our natural world and survival.

Greenpeace Still On Oil Rig, Seattle Kayactivists Plan To Meet Shell

April 9, 2015 Sydney Brownstone, www.thestranger.com Resist! Environment, Greenpeace, Oil & Gas

Guess we now know why many of those attractive activists ("attractivists," as coined byThe Stranger's Mike Force) have backgrounds in extreme sports. Greenpeace reports that this morning, six activists from the Esperanza—the Greenpeace vessel tracking a Shell oil drilling platform called the Polar Pioneer as it travels across the Pacific Ocean—managed to scale the rig and affix themselves to the underside of the main deck. The six are now tweeting from the rig, located 750 miles northwest of Hawaii. In 2012, Shell won an injunction that kept Greenpeace activists away from its rigs. This drilling season, Seattle-based activists are also planning to greet the rigs with a flotilla of kayaks in Elliott Bay. The Polar Pioneer is due to arrive in Port Angeles on April 12, according to Marinetraffic.com, and activists expect it to pull into Seattle a few days later.

Chevron Whistleblower Sent Internal Videos To Amazon Watch

April 9, 2015 Amazon Watch, www.amazonwatch.org Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas

Internal Chevron videos of secret "pre-inspections" of well sites during the Ecuador pollution trial show company technicians finding and then mocking the extensive oil contamination in areas of the Amazon rainforest that the oil giant had claimed in various courts had been remediated, said the environmental and human rights advocacy group Amazon Watch. An apparent Chevron whistleblower sent dozens of internal company videos to Amazon Watch with a note signed "A Friend from Chevron." Most of the videos – some of which can be seen on the Amazon Watch website – show Chevron employees and consultants secretly visiting the company's former well sites in Ecuador to find "clean" spots where they could take soil and water samples at later site inspections when the presiding trial judge would be in attendance.

Frack-Tosse Intolerant Festival Expresses Opposition To Pipelines

April 8, 2015 John Asebes, www.wvva.com Resist! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas

Those at the Frack-Tosse Intolerant festival, weren't shy when sharing their opinion on the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline. Dale McCutcheon says, "whole towns have had to close down and be removed because of ground water contamination, I think sometimes in this area we don't fully estimate the potential of our water supply and appreciate what we have." Musicians at the event say, "they're 44 inches wide, they spit chemicals out and start fires." The proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline would run 300 miles through Northwestern West Virginia and southern Virginia, Mountain Valley LLC. has filed a lawsuit to allow surveying on more than 100 peoples land in West Virginia. Supporters of the pipeline say it could bring thousands of jobs to West Virginia and more than one million dollars to Monroe County annually.

Activists: Civil Disobedience The Only Way To Stop Shale Gas

April 8, 2015 Philip Tees, www.cphpost.dk Resist! Civil Disobedience, Denmark, Environment, Oil & Gas, Shale

A group of citizens in northern Jutland have organised an anti-fracking campaign of civil disobedience to stop the French company Total from carrying out trial drilling for shale gas near the town of Frederikshavn. Aktion Bloker Boretårnet (‘operation stop the drilling rig’) yesterday stopped three lorries carrying equipment to the planned site of the drilling project, according to the group’s Facebook page. The group has told Energiwatch.dk that its members will continue its blockade to physically prevent the rig from being delivered. “Sometimes it’s necessary to use civil disobedience if the consequences of not acting is so great,” the group told Energiwatch.dk. Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF) in northern Jutland is also campaigning to stop the first drilling for shale gas in Denmark from taking place. Thomas Krog, the chairman of SF in the region who is a parliamentary candidate for the party, outlined the reasons why to Energiwatch.dk.

First ‘Clean Coal’ Plant Is Backdoor Subsidy To Oil

April 4, 2015 David Roberts, www.grist.org Educate! Capitalism, Environment, Government, Oil & Gas

The Boundary Dam Power Station, located just north of the North Dakota border, is the province’s oldest and largest coal-fired power plant. Its first boiler was commissioned in 1959. Boilers have been added and decommissioned over the years; there are now six, four of which are active. It is owned and run by SaskPower, the province’s principal utility. (A vertically integrated monopoly utility, for those keeping score at home.) In 2008, the provincial government announced the Boundary Dam CCS project, whereby one of the station’s boilers (No. 3) would be replaced with a modern 160-megawatt boiler and coupled with a facility that would capture and store up to 90 percent of the boiler’s CO2 emissions.

Report: States Mismanage Fracking Waste

April 4, 2015 Anastasia Pantsios www.ecowatch.com Educate! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas

It might seem illogical, but in 1988 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put a loophole in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) which regulates hazardous and solid waste, exempting the waste from oil and gas exploration, development and production (E &P) from oversight. While it conceded that such wastes might indeed be hazardous, it said that state regulations were adequate. That was then, and this is now. The fracking boom has brought oil and gas operations into states and communities that never dealt with them before. Elected officials in those states are often beholden to those oil and gas interests, especially as the amount of money flowing into elections has multiplied exponentially. Basically, the fox is guarding the henhouse.

What Atlantic Coast Should Brace For With Offshore Drilling

April 4, 2015 Wilma Subra, www.truth-out.org Educate! Environment, Finance and the Economy, Offshore Drilling, Oil & Gas

A network of pipelines [is] required to connect the rigs to the mainland for the transportation of oil and gas resources and in some cases, waste products. The pipelines disrupt the sea bottom ecosystems, physical and structural integrity of the sea bottom, and water flow patterns. As the pipelines travel through the estuaries and on land, their transportation routes are heavily damaged. The physical and structural disruption of the environment becomes even greater. Marshlands and wetlands are disrupted and begin to erode and the coastline moves inland. The offshore and coastal areas will be forever damaged and destroyed.

Groups Deploy Blimp With Message To Port Of Seattle

April 4, 2015 Gary M. Chittim, www.king5.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Seattle

Groups launched an unmanned blimp over the Port of Seattle Thursday in an effort to recruit more opponents of a plan to provide space for arctic drilling equipment. Shell's arctic offshore drilling fleet is expected to arrive this month for storage and preparation ahead of a new round of exploratory drilling in the Chuckchi Sea. The groups included the Backbone Campaign, 350 Seattle and Rising Tide Seattle. The tethered blimp rose 200 feet over the port in full view of morning commuters. A banner on the sides spelled out: "sHELLNO.org. Join the Flotilla!"

Seattle Residents Urge Port To Reverse Shell Oil Lease Deal

April 3, 2015 Betsy Lopez-Wagner, www.earthjustice.org Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Seattle, shell

“Your child, my grandchild and the unborn grandchild of our grandchildren are going to live with what we do to this society.” Those were Seattleite Jack Smith’s words to the Port of Seattle’s five commissioners on March 24, minutes before the port re-affirmed its two-year lease with Foss Maritime. In a motion that could be described as too little, too late, the port added a 30-day public comment period for future leases after getting pushback for signing the last lease without the public’s knowledge. Smith was one of several dozen protestors who spoke out in objection of the port conducting lease negotiations in secret with Foss Maritime where it agreed to host and service Shell’s Arctic drilling exploration vessels, solidifying a $13 million two-year lease.

Enbridge Tar Sands Resistance Tour

April 2, 2015 Action Network, www.actionnetwork.org Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Tar Sands

Big oil companies like Enbridge are threatening the Midwest and Great Lakes region with dirty tar sands pipelines and toxic fracking infrastructure. But communities across the Midwest are coming together to protect our water and stop this climate catastrophe. From April 14th to the 30th, the Enbridge Tar Sands Resistance Tour is traveling from Michigan to Minnesota to build the resistance across the Midwest. At each stop we’ll hear from community leaders about the threat Enbridge and tar sands poses to our communities, and we’ll strategize and make action plans for how to stop it. At the end of the tour, with thousands of new people engaged, we will all come together in Minneapolis for a mass action against the Alberta Clipper pipeline which has already illegally started transporting tar sands, and must be stopped!

Myersville Protesters Reject Dominion Transmission Expansion

April 2, 2015 Nancy Lavin, www.fredericknewspost.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Protest

An open house Tuesday night on Dominion Transmission’s expansion plans — including the addition of a second compressor at its Myersville station — drew a small but vocal group of protesters to Town Hall. The event was the fourth and final in a series of open houses throughout the region on Dominion’s Leidy South Project, which includes expanded compression along its interstate natural gas pipeline in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. If approved, the project would add a second, 15,900-horsepower compressor at the Myersville compressor station, which went into service late last fall. Protesters, including members of the Myersville Citizens for a Rural Community group, voiced an array of concerns with the project and the company, ranging from its environmental impact and noise pollution levels to claims about the legality of the station’s present operations.

Don’t Frack With Denton: Community’s Fight To Defend Home Rule

April 2, 2015 Cole Mellino, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas, Texas

The town is the first municipality in Texas to ban fracking and has consequently become ground zero for the fracking debate. Yesterday, Denton Mayor Chris Watts and City Attorney Anita Burgess traveled to Austin to testify at a hearing on two bills that have emerged in response to Denton’s fracking ban, according to Frack Free Denton. In solidarity with grassroots organizers from the Frack Free Denton movement and other residents from small Texas towns who also testified in Austin, documentary filmmaker and Denton resident Garrett Graham released a new trailer for his forthcoming film. With the help of Frack Free Denton, Graham made a film that “chronicles Denton’s uphill battle against oil and gas interest deep in the heart of the gas patch,” said Frack Free Denton.

Hailing Major Activist Anti-Fracking Victories

April 1, 2015 Reynard Loki, www.alternet.org Resist! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas

The nation's first federal regulations on fracking, unveiled by the Obama administration last week, sparked immediate criticism from leading anti-fracking activists. Americans Against Fracking, a coalition of 250 environmental and liberal groups that includes Greenpeace, 350.org, MoveOn.org, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth, issued a statement characterizing the new rules—meant chiefly to reduce the threat of fracking-related water contamination—as "toothless." Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, who serves on the Americans Against Fracking advisory board, said that Obama's fracking regulations "are nothing more than a giveaway to the oil and gas industry."

Global Shale Fail: Fracking Fields Abandoned

April 1, 2015 Steve Horn, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas

With some analysts predicting the global price of oil to see another drop, many oil majors have deployed their parachutes and jumped from the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) projects rapidly nose-diving across the world. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the unconvetional shale oil and gas boom is still predominantly U.S.-centric, likely to remain so for years to come. “Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have packed up nearly all of their hydraulic fracturing wildcatting in Europe, Russia and China,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. Though the fracking boom has taken off in the U.S. like no other place on Earth, the U.S.actually possesses less than 10 percent of the world’s estimated shale reserves, according to The Journal.

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