Oil & Gas

Oil Investments Are Dropping

February 25, 2015 The Canadian Press, www.ctvnews.ca Educate! Canada, Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas

Shell Canada Ltd. says it's pulling its regulatory application for the proposed Pierre River oilsands project north of Fort McMurray, Alta., in order to focus on existing operations. The move is the latest blow to the oilsands as companies look to cut costs and capital spending plans following the drop in oil prices. Shell says that given the preliminary nature of the Pierre River project it expected the impact on jobs would be limited. The Pierre River application proposed a 200,000 barrel-per-day heavy oil mine. The company says it already has existing regulatory approval to potentially more than double its oilsands production from the current level of 255,000 bpd. Shell said Pierre River remains a very long term opportunity and noted that the company will continue to hold the leases and can reapply for regulatory approval.

Twenty Cove Point Protectors Move Calvert County Court

February 25, 2015 Margaret Flowers, www.wearecovepoint.org Resist! Cove Point, Energy, Environment, Maryland, Oil & Gas

On Monday, February 23, twenty Cove Point Protectors went to trial in the Calvert County District Court for actions last November and December to raise awareness and build resistance to a new gas refinery, liquefaction train, power plant and export terminal being built by Dominion Resources in the neighborhood of Cove Point in Southern Maryland. The Cove Point Protectors, as a group, were charged with 20 counts of trespass, 19 counts of failure to obey a lawful order and 2 counts of disorderly conduct. The gas refinery and export project, which will emit carcinogens and other toxins into the community and present a risk of chemical spill, fire and explosion, are the first to be placed in a densely-populated area. In fact, Dominion Resources lied during the permitting process by leaving out 90% of the more than 44,000 local people in its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Opposition To Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline Rising

February 24, 2015 Augusta Free Press, www.augustafreepress.com Resist! Dominion, Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas

Dominion’s recent release of proposed “alternative routes” has Nelson County landowners outraged. And so does Dominion’s reliance on eminent domain as the “preferred alternative” to transport vast quantities of natural gas for export. “The fact that Dominion has now gone on record with a handful of routes doesn’t solve any of their problems,” said Joanna Salidis, President of Friends of Nelson. “These will impact an entirely new list of landowners, resulting in increased property owner resistance and lawsuits. Dominion continues to ignore all requests to drop the proposal or to use existing pipeline easement infrastructure instead of depending solely on eminent domain to achieve its business goals. ” This morning’s protests in Richmond give further proof of how widespread and deep-seated is the opposition to Dominion’s plans.

Manure Dumped On ExxonMobil Refinery In Protest

February 24, 2015 Daily Breeze, www.dailybreeze.com Resist! Environment, Labor Unions, Oil & Gas, Waste

Protesters clad in hazmat suits protested over the weekend at the ExxonMobil refinery gates in Torrance in response to what they called the company’s “lackluster response” to community complaints in the aftermath of a plant explosion last week. A Faceback post by the United Steel Workers union identified the protesters as “a squadron of USW Local 675 commandos” backed by Occupy Wall Street members. They dumped a pile of manure at the refinery to protest ExxonMobil’s delayed response to inquiries about whether the ash-like debris released from the refinery posed any health risks. The steelworkers claim the debris could be harmful to human health.

Criminal Charges Filed Against Duke Energy

February 23, 2015 Brian Sewell, www.appvoices.org Strategize! Energy, Environment, North Carolina, Oil & Gas

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against Duke Energy for violating the federal Clean Water Act at coal ash sites across North Carolina. The company announced today it has reached a proposed plea agreement with federal prosecutors to resolve the charges. According to a Duke Energy press release, the plea agreement includes $68.2 million in fines and restitution and $34 million for community service and mitigation. The charges include multiple misdemeanor violations of the Clean Water Act in connection with last year’s coal ash spill in the Dan River as well as unauthorized discharges at other Duke coal plants in North Carolina. The agreement is subject to review and approval by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Is Northern Gateway Quietly Being Shelved?

February 23, 2015 Tracy Johnson, www.cbc.ca Resist! Canada, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Oil & Gas

In the earnings conference call, Guy Jarvis, Enbridge’s president of liquids and pipelines said that with the current opposition to pipelines, it’s easier to make incremental changes to the existing network to get oil flowing to U.S. ports. "All of these involve relatively small, low cost, bolt-on projects that can be staged in increments as required to meet shipper needs," said Jarvis. The company also said in the call that it expects Keystone XL to be in operation in 2019 and for one of the West Coast pipelines to be operating in 2020. That would be either Northern Gateway or Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. It’s notable that it didn’t express any confidence Gateway would be the pipeline in operation, even though it is further ahead in the regulatory process and Kinder Morgan is facing a lot of opposition of its own.

Belleville: Trail Guardians Worried About Pipelines

February 23, 2015 Laura Belleville, www.roanoke.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Pipeline, Virginia

For the past 90 years, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy has served as a guardian of the nearly 2,200-mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Today, we are faced with one of the most challenging threats ever to the integrity of the trail: a series of proposals to build new petroleum pipeline corridors across the trail to transport natural gas. We want to offer additional points for consideration relevant to the article “Landowner rights vs. public need”. We are specifically concerned about the cumulative impact of the significant number of pipelines being proposed across Appalachian National Scenic Trail landscapes. Some of these landscapes are public lands and others are private. Regardless of land ownership, we need to take a critical look at the overall impacts to these lands from this modern day “gas rush.”

Newsletter: Transforming Fundamental Power Inequities

February 21, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Corporatocracy, Cove Point, Energy, Environment, fast track, Fracking, Free Trade Agreements, Nonviolence, Oil & Gas, Oil Trains, Seneca Lake, TPP, Trade

Most of the Popular Resistance team is in Cove Point, Maryland right now. Almost all are very likely to go to jail for several weeks after Monday's hearing for our efforts to stop the Dominion fracked gas export terminal at Cove Point. You can donate to the campaign here. Stopping this terminal is the key to stopping fracking on the east coast. The Calvert Commissioners have made a charade out of democracy. The government in Calvert County has kept the facts from the public. Before letting the public know of the plan to build the terminal they entered into a secrecy agreement with Dominion so the public has been kept in the dark. In the first hearing on the terminal, the County Attorney wrote the agenda: take public testimony, close the record and vote for the proposal. The proposal was for massive tax breaks for Dominion and waiver of zoning requirements. The latter turned out to be unconstitutional. Protests and civil resistance are the only avenues left to stop the Dominion terminal. This is literally a life and death situation for a community of 44,000 people; hundreds, probably more than a thousand lives, will be shortened and diseases that are not common now, will become common.

Cabot Continues Legal Fight Against Fracking Activist

February 21, 2015 Marie Cusick, www.stateimpact.npr.org Resist! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas

Houston, Texas-based Cabot Oil & Gas is headed back to court again next week in an ongoing legal battle with an anti-fracking activist. The year-and-a-half long feud between Cabot and 64-year-old Vera Scroggins appeared to be over last fall, when Susquehanna County judge Kenneth Seamans ruled she would bepermanently barred from Cabot sites and must observe buffer zones ranging from 25 to 100 feet. But Cabot is continuing to challenge her movements and wants her to be punished for allegedly coming too close to a wellpad access road last month. The two sides will meet again in a Susquehanna County courtroom on February 25th. The legal battle made international news last year when Cabot got a sweeping court injunction against Scroggins– effectively barring her from half the county. Last March, the order was revised to be much less restrictive.

County Man Makes His Case At Dominion Lawsuit Hearing

February 21, 2015 Calvin Trice, www.newsleader.com Resist! Dominion, Energy, Environment, Land Rights, Oil & Gas

If Dominion asks a landowner for permission to survey property for a pipeline route and the homeowner says "no," can the company come onto the land anyway? Churchville homeowners William and Wendy Little believe their "no" means no. Dominion's representatives say the company still has the right to survey the couple's 5 acres. The Littles' lawyer argued in a hearing for their federal lawsuit Thursday that the state law that grants natural gas companies the right to study private land without the owner's permission doesn't speak to the Littles' case. Virginia's statute allows such private property entry and doesn't count it as trespass if the company asks to study the land and doesn't receive permission.

World’s Biggest PR Firm Quits American Oil Lobby

February 21, 2015 Connor Gibson, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Capitalism, Energy, Marketing, Oil & Gas

Perhaps you heard the good news—the world’s largest public relations firm, Edelman, just spun off an advertising subsidiary so that it could show a commitment to not aiding the denial of climate change science. The Guardian explains how American Petroleum Institute’s (API) contracts with Edelman were so massive—tens of millions of dollars—that it was up to 10 percent of the PR giant’s income. or years, Edelman has managed multi-million dollar contracts with the API, using its Blue Advertising subsidiary to help API run commercials selling fantasies to people: that oil and gas are our only viable, plentiful, “AMERICAN” sources of energy. In the saga that led Edelman to dump the lobbyists at API, Greenpeace had a small role to play: we infiltrated a commercial shoot, run by Edelman’s Blue advertising arm for API.

West Virginians Look Toward The Sun: No To Coal, Fracking

February 20, 2015 Mikala Reasbeck, www.mintpressnews.com Create! Environment, Fracking, Oil & Gas, Solar Energy, West Virginia

At just 9.70 cents per kilowatt hour, West Virginians pay the third-lowest electricity rates in the nation. Yet they don’t enjoy the nation’s lowest electricity bills, and they’re not likely to in the future, either. Indeed, from 2007 to 2011, electricity rates jumped an average of 50 percent across the state. And on Feb. 3, the state’s Public Service Commission approved another rate increase for Mon Power and Potomac Edison, subsidiaries operating under the Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. Together, these subsidiaries serve over 520,500 customers in 34 counties and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. This latest hike is “just 7.4 percent more reason to go solar,” according to Joey James’ reading of the document from the commission.

Pipeline Proposal Meets Opposition In Schuylkill County

February 18, 2015 Mark Gilger Jr., www.republicanherald.com Resist! Environment, Land Rights, Oil & Gas, Pipeline

Jack Zerbe II was about 10 years old when the Sunoco pipeline was built through his family’s farm in Washington Township, but he remembers that it took 15 to 20 years for production on that land to return to where it was before construction. As three generations of Zerbes continue to oppose the proposed construction of The Williams Companies pipeline through their portion of the county, they received a letter Jan. 26 from another company looking to put another pipeline through their property. “We were like, ‘You have got to be kidding me,’ ” Leah Zerbe, Jack’s daughter, who also lives on the farm, said Thursday. The Williams Companies Inc., an energy company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has plans to expand its Transco pipeline to connect the natural gas fields in northern Pennsylvania to markets in the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern states by 2017.

81 Year Old Says She Will Fight Pipeline Through Her Farm

February 18, 2015 Duncan Adams, www.roanoke.com Resist! Land Rights, Oil & Gas, Pipeline

An acquaintance told Louise Garman to accept the inevitable — that there’s little she can do to stop a buried natural gas pipeline from traveling through her family’s farm in the Catawba Valley if the powers that be ultimately decide that’s the anointed route. But Garman, 81, said she still has enough fight to object to an alternative route that could bring the 42-inch-diameter interstate pipeline through the property of family members, friends and neighbors. “People can’t be expected to just lie down,” Garman said Monday. Mountain Valley Pipeline confirmed earlier this month that it is considering alternatives to a previously disclosed route for the proposed pipeline but has declined to date to provide more specifics.

Oil Strike Is About Lives Of Workers

February 17, 2015 Butch Cleve, www.theguardian.com Resist! Environment, Labor Unions, Oil & Gas, worker safety

In an oil refinery, like the one where I work, stuff leaks all the time. Sometimes dripped oil just makes a black spot on the ground. Sometimes 500-degree gas flows out, ignites and explodes. These powerful blasts can maim and kill. I’ve seen it. The first time was in 1998, four years after I started work at a refinery in Anacortes, which was first owned by Shell but later became Tesoro. It happened at the adjacent refinery, owned at that time by Equilon. An explosion killed six workers. For a lot of us, that was our first experience with a refinery catastrophe with multiple fatalities. It shocked you to the core. Then, five years ago, at my refinery, a massive explosion killed seven of my friends.

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