Oil & Gas

A Day Of Tears: Report From The “sHell No!” Action

August 1, 2015 Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, www.macskamoksha.com Resist! Arctic drilling, Law, Oil & Gas, sHell No

By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume in MacsKamoksha - As has been well-documented, Royal Dutch Shell has plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, despite their knowledge that such extraction will exacerbate Climate Change. President Obama has given these plans his blessing, as could be expected of a politician beholden to the extraction industries. In order to commit such an ecocidal act, Shell has to transport many different resources to the area by ship, and activists have attempted to slow the process by blocking, if only temporarily, a couple of these key transports. In Seattle, kayakers delayed the departure of a Shell oil rig in June. In Portland, the Fennica, a Shell ship carrying a key piece that is required on site before drilling can legally begin, docked for repairs about five days ago, giving local activists scant time to put together a response.

Protesters Removed From Portland Bridge

July 31, 2015 Stuart Tomlinson, www.oregonlive.com Resist! Arctic drilling, Environment, Oil & Gas, sHell No

By Stuart Tomlinson in Oregon Live - Just before 6 p.m. Thursday night, Shell Oil's controversial icebreaker MSV Fennica weaved through nine remaining protesters hanging from the St. Johns Bridge and made its way toward the Pacific Ocean. After winning an early morning game of chicken with the ship, Greenpeace protesters suspended from the bridge and in kayaks and canoes on the river were left disappointed. Thirteen of them had spent the better part of 40 hours in climbers slings and on portable platforms. On Thursday afternoon, after more than six hours of relative quiet, boats manned by Coast Guard officers and Portland-area police officers began circling protesters in kayaks and canoes on the Willamette River below the St. Johns Bridge. Two-hundred feet above the water's surface on the North Portland bridge, Portland police blocked access to all vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

Unist’ot’en Call For Support And Solidarity

July 30, 2015 Unis'to'ten Camp, www.unistotencamp.com Resist! Environment, Indigenous People, Land Rights, Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines

By Unis'to'ten Camp - It is becoming clear that the situation here is moving toward an escalation point. Chevron has set up a base in Houston in order to do work on the secton of Pacific Trails Pipeline that crosses our traditional territory. In recent days a low-flying helicopter has flown over the camp several times following a route that corresponds to the path of the proposed PTP pipeline. We were also visited by the head of the RCMP detachment who clearly stated to Freda that they intend to “ensure the work crews can do their work safely.” Our supporters maintaining an Unist’ot’en check point on Chisolm Rd were also visited and threatened by the police. In both cases, the officers asserted that we could be arrested for blocking a “public road”. It is clear by the timing of these recent police actions that they are working in tandem with the pipeline companies.

Obama’s Approval of Arctic Oil Drilling Is A Bitter Betrayal

July 24, 2015 Miyoko Sakashita, www.medium.com Educate! Arctic drilling, Climate Change, Environment, Obama, Oil & Gas, San Francisco, sHell No

By Miyoko Sakashita in Medium - The Obama administration had approved Shell’s permits to drill for oil in the Arctic this summer. It came like a punch in the gut. How could he? Not only will this put Arctic wildlife directly in harm’s way of oil spill but it will push us deeper in the very climate crisis that President Obama has vowed time and again to finally address. More than 1 million people had urged the president to keep oil drilling out of the Arctic. Just last weekend, thousands of people around the world took to the streets and their local waterways to say “Shell No” to drilling in the far north. Obama didn’t just defy environmentalists around the world who have been calling for the Arctic to be kept off-limits to offshore drilling, he betrayed his own stated values and cast a dark shadow across the United States’ role as a world leader in transitioning the planet to the clean energy future it desperately needs.

Chevron’s US Media Strategy: Write The Headlines

July 23, 2015 Ed King, www.rtcc.org Educate! Chevron, Freedom of Press, Media, Oil & Gas

By Ed King in RTCC - It’s especially lucky to have a beneficent local employer, which regards economic growth as a priority. Sometimes those locals are even invited to the employer’s offices where they can conduct “actual research” and take job training classes. Welcome to the US West Coast, where fossil fuel giant Chevron owns the news and controls the messaging in a city of 100,000. Richmond also happens to be the location for one of the US$200 billion oil and gas major’s largest refineries, which employs 3,536 locals. This isn’t George Orwell’s 1984, it’s 2015: a media landscape where declining local coverage allows the Chevron-funded Richmond Standard news website to offer a “community driven” news source. In reality, it’s a platform for Chevron to try and rebuild community links that were shattered in 2012 when a huge fire at the refinery left 15,000 residents needing hospital treatment

Kayactivists Across The Country Protest Arctic Drilling

July 21, 2015 Various, www.ourarcticocean.org Resist! Arctic drilling, Environment, Oil & Gas, shell

By Various in Our Arctic Ocean - From Santa Barbara to Boston and from Florida to Alaska, hundreds of citizens banded together on Saturday for the “Shell No” Day of Action. With more than 20 events in 15 different states – which included speeches by a U.S. Senator, a Congresswoman, and numerous other local elected officials – the nationwide protest continued the “kayaktivist” movement that began in Seattle, and called on President Obama to stop Shell – or any other oil company – from drilling in the Arctic Ocean. The “kayaktivism” movement began in May in Seattle when controversy erupted over whether Seattle should host Shell’s Arctic armada, including the 307-foot-tall Polar Pioneer drill rig. That protest sparked a national debate on the dangers of Arctic Ocean drilling.

Kayactivists Prepare For Shell Icebreaker To Arrive In Portland

July 20, 2015 Amelia Templeton, www.opb.org Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, sHell No

By Amelia Templeton in OPB - Climate change activists in Portland are planning to take to the water in kayaks to engage in civil disobedience when an ice-breaking vessel working for the the Royal Dutch Shell oil company arrives at a local dry dock for repairs. The ship, the MSV Fennica, is part of the fleet Shell plans to use to explore for oil and gas this summer in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. It gashed its hull in shallow waters off the coast of Northwest Alaska on July 3, and will be repaired at the Vigor Industrial shipyard in Portland. “The Fennica is seen really as the last line of stopping arctic drilling,” said Mia Reback, a community organizer with 350 PDX and the Climate Action Coalition. This is the last piece of the puzzle that Shell needs to legally start their test drilling.”

Big Oil Knew And Lied And Planet Earth Got Fried

July 15, 2015 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Educate! Climate Change, Oil & Gas

By Jon Queally in Common Dreams - Now, a new set of documents and a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) answers the age-old question always asked when it comes to crimes of corruption, cover-up, and moral defiance: What did they know and when did they know it? As it turns out, "The Climate Deception Dossiers" shows that leading oil giants such as ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell—just like tobacco companies who buried and denied the threat of cancer for smokers—knew about the dangers of global warming and the role of carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions long before the public received warning from the broader scientific community. And what's worse, of course, is not only that they knew—but how they have spent the last nearly thirty years actively denying the damage they were causing to the planet and its inhabitants.

Mapping the Portlandia Fossil Fuel Corridor

July 15, 2015 Jonah Majure, www.portlandrisingtide.org Resist! Climate Change, Environment, Oil & Gas, Sustainability

By Jonah Majure in Portland Rising Tide - It seems like just about every week Portland is receiving some sort of new award or recognition for sustainability. We certainly built up a legacy of ecological awareness early-on. Tom McCall, our republican governor in the 60’s and 70’s, advocated for protecting the Commons and cleaning up our watersheds and airsheds. Portland was also ahead of other cities in the West in its commitment to smart urban planning and transportation justice. It only makes sense that Portland is ground zero for the climate fight, but maybe not for the reasons one would think. While we’ve been told by City Hall and the media that we’ve already won the struggle for a greener future here in Portland, the reality is even more twisted and dangerous than the fossil fuel metropolises of Calgary or Houston.

Protests As Climate Summit Begins In Toronto

July 10, 2015 CHCH, www.chch.com Resist! Canada, Climate Change, Environment, Oil & Gas

By CHCH - Hundreds of invitation-only delegates are inside the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto for the Climate Summit of the Americas. And as it began, hundreds of protesters were outside blocking traffic. Early morning protests began around 7. Demonstrators unravelled spools of yarn to block an entire intersection in front of the Royal York. When the conference began at 9 this morning, the group gathered in front of the hotel entrance and began chanting “shut down the summit”. They say a lot of the people inside are those most responsible for destroying the planet. Some attendees include Shell’s CEO, the head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and heads of other major corporate cap and trade groups. Despite the shouting outside, premier Kathleen Wynne kicked off the summit, aimed at fighting global warming.

Kentucky’s Anti-Fracking Movement Deals Setback to Pipelines

July 10, 2015 Kelley Davidson, www.occupy.com Resist! Fracking, Kentucky, Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines

By Kelley Davidson in Occupy - Some recent victories against powerful energy companies have given environmental activists in Kentucky a reason to celebrate. In late May, Bluegrass Pipeline LLC was denied eminent domain by the Kentucky Court of Appeals following a legal battle against environmental lawyer and renowned activist Tom FitzGerald, whose efforts succeeded in blocking a natural gas transport line across 13 Kentucky counties. FitzGerald, representing a group of concerned citizens called Kentuckians United to Restrict Eminent Domain, or KURED, managed to stave off a deal that would have transported gas fracked from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virgina through hundreds of miles of state farmland, and heading all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

History’s Teachable Moments On Pipelines

July 6, 2015 H. Patricia Hynes, www.recorder.com Educate! Oil & Gas, Oil Pipelines, Public Health

By H. Patricia Hynes in The Recorder - The dominant industry argument for the Tennessee Gas Co.’s proposed pipeline through western Massachusetts is that it will provide gas for Boston on peak demand winter days and smaller-scale gas needs in western Massachusetts. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that this is its true intent, then past history offers some lessons for the contested pipeline proposal. In the mid 1960s, Massachusetts set out to solve metropolitan Boston’s projected drinking water shortage with a plan to divert water from the Connecticut River, channeling it through an aqueduct to Quabbin Reservoir (site of an earlier water diversion project for Boston that sacrificed the life of four towns). The Massachusetts Legislature approved the diversion plan in the late ’60s, with little focused opposition.

Canada’s Oil Country To Become ‘World Leader’ On Climate Change

July 6, 2015 Emily Natkin, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! Canada, Climate Change, Oil & Gas

By Emily Natkin in Think Progress - Last month, the historically ultra-conservative and oil-rich province of Alberta, Canada, did the unthinkable: It elected a left-wing government. And that new government just made one of its first big moves: It announced a serious clamp-down on climate change. “We need a climate change plan that is bold, ambitious, and will bring Alberta into a new era of responsible energy development and environmental sustainability,” Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said Thursday. “If we get it right, our environmental policy will make us world leaders on this issue, instead of giving us a black eye around the world.” According to Phillips, the province will double its carbon tax. In other words, it will ask oil companies and other high-emitting industries to pay double what they’re paying now for pumping greenhouse gases into the air.

Canada’s New Oil Extraction Methods Put Pressures On Environment

July 4, 2015 Audrea Lim, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Canada, Environment, Oil & Gas

By Audrea Lim in Al Jazeera - Environmentalists are hopeful that last month’s provincial election, in which Alberta’s left-leaning New Democratic Party ended 40 years of conservative party rule, will bring about tougher energy regulations. The NDP’s leader, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, haspledged to review the province’s environmental rules and processes for approving new projects. Hudema has urged AER to consider the impact of climate change and the cumulative effects of oil-sands development when it evaluates project proposals, as well as make its standards and inspections more rigorous. He also wants the new government to limit the potential for conflicts-of-interest.

Peru Cracking Down Against Dissent On Excavation Economy

July 1, 2015 Lynn Holland, www.coha.org Resist! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Mining, Oil & Gas, Peru

By Lynn Holland in COHA - Throughout much of southern Peru and Cajamarca region in the north, farmers and community organizations have declared their opposition to a $1.4 billion USD copper mining project known as Tía María. The project belongs to Southern Copper Corporation, which is owned by Grupo México, a Mexican American mining company. Community members are quite familiar with Southern Copper’s dismal record in neighboring regions where its mining projects have dried up water supplies and contaminated surrounding lands. The result for indigenous and other rural people has been serious illness and the loss of employment in farming and fishing. With this in mind, the Tambo Valley communities rejected the project by a resounding93.4 percent during a popular consultation in 2009.

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