Oil

Massive Pipeline Rupture Coats Streets Of Los Angeles In ‘Knee-High’ Crude Oil

May 17, 2014 Joanna M. Foster, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! California, Oil, pollution

Residents in Atwater Village in northeast Los Angeles woke up Thursday morning to find crude oil flowing down their streets. A 20 inch wide, above-ground oil line ruptured around 1 a.m., sending a geyser of oil 20 feet into the air according to local reports. The oil has coated a half-square-mile area of the mostly industrial neighborhood. Oil in some areas was reported to be knee-high. According to current estimates, 10,000 gallons of crude oil poured onto the streets before the line could be remotely turned off. Two people were sent to the hospital after they reported feeling nauseous. People at the scene said that the smell of oil was very strong. The Fire Department and a hazardous materials team remain on the scene. Several businesses — including a nearby strip club, which was evacuated during the spill — have reported damages. The exterior of the strip club was coated in oil from the spewing pipe. Cars parked near the site of the spill have also been affected. Although the pipeline was shut off within 10 minutes of emergency crews reaching the scene, oil continued to flow for 45 minutes.

Movement To Better Regulate Or Eliminate Oil Trains Is Growing

May 10, 2014 Dan Levy, www.wnyt.com Educate! Environment, Oil, Organizing

There are more signs that the movement to better regulate or eliminate oil trains from our community is growing. Several dozen people gathered at the Bethlehem Town Library Friday night to embark on a journey to eradicate oil trains, a trip that most people agree will be an uphill journey. Now that the federal government is calling the transport of crude oil by rail an "imminent hazard" to the public, activists feel they're gaining momentum. "It's an explosive issue and people are paying attention," says Sandy Steubing, of People of Albany United for Safe Energy -- or PAUSE. Steubing's grassroots organization is determined to eliminate oil tankers, like the ones that can be seen across the Capital Region, especially in the middle of I-787 in downtown Albany and at the Port of Albany. Along that path, graphic pictures that have been widely seen on both television and the internet, like the ones from Lac-Megantic, Quebec where 47 people died last summer in a train derailment and explosion, and pictures like the ones from Lynchburgh, Virginia last month, where 30,000 gallons of crude spilled into the James River, have become persuasive reminders that oil trains can be unsafe and unpredictable at any speed.

Time For A Moratorium On Crude Oil Rail Shipments

May 5, 2014 Noah Greenwald, www.commondreams.org Resist! Oil, pollution

Wednesday's fiery train derailment in Lynchburg, Va., is yet another disturbing reminder of the dangers of increasing shipments of particularly explosive Bakken crude oil from North Dakota and western Canada. Shipments of the oil have ramped up dramatically in recent years and a series of derailments, including one in Quebec that killed 47, have raised serious safety concerns. We've got to do something. The best first step is a moratorium on these shipments until we know for sure that people and the environment can be protected. Here's why we need a timeout: The volume of crude oil shipped by rail in the United States increased from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 400,000 carloads in 2013 -- a more than 40-fold expansion. Much of that oil is from the Bakken region, which, in a study of 86 different crude oils from around the world, contained several times more combustible gases than other oils tested, according to The Wall Street Journal. And yet, despite this massive increase in rail shipments of an explosive fuel, there's been little public scrutiny, and even less government action, to make sure we're doing everything we can to make it safe.

Company Plans To Strip Mine Oil Sands In Northwest Alabama

May 5, 2014 Stan Diel, www.blog.al.com Educate! Oil, Tar Sands

A company’s plan to strip-mine oil sands near north Alabama’s Tennessee Valley has residents in several counties concerned about declining property values and environmental impact. MS Industries II LLC, a mining company based in Wolf Springs, has acquired more than 2,500 acres of land in Colbert, Lawrence and Morgan Counties. The company’s executives said they intend to use proprietary technology to recover bitumen from sandstone. Petroleum-based bitumen is a primary ingredient of asphalt, and the overwhelming majority of the material that is mined will be used for road paving, CEO Steven Smith said last week. Bitumen can be processed and refined into oil. The material will be surface-mined from pits that typically will range in size from 35 to 40 acres and will be processed in a plant in Lawrence County. The company expects to mine two to three pits at a time with each pit having a production life of up to five years, COO John Christmas said. The project would directly create several hundred jobs with a broad range of wages beginning at $15 an hour, Christmas and Smith said.

BP Vikings Invade British Museum

May 4, 2014 Staff, www.CreativeResistance.org Resist! Art, Climate Change, Creative Resistance, Energy, Oil

From CreativeResistance.org: Theatrical protest group the Reclaim Shakespeare Company has invaded the British Museum and held a surprise performance challenging BP’s sponsorship of the popular Vikings exhibition. The performance aimed to point out the irony in the fact that an oil company accused of recklessly plundering natural resources is sponsoring an exhibition about some of history’s most famous looters and pillagers. The performance came shortly after the same group launched a spoof Viking film based on the exhibition’s promotional trailer, and a petition calling for an end to the British Museum’s BP sponsorship deal, which is up for renewal in 2017. A large crowd of museum-goers gathered to watch the performance. Security guards looked on, but did not interfere. After the performance, several people dressed as Vikings stayed inside the museum to hand outanti-BP flyers to the public, and the cast performed again outside the museum.

Dutch Arrest 44 Greenpeace Activists Blocking Russian Arctic Oil Tanker

May 1, 2014 John Vidal, www.theguardian.com Resist! Arctic, Greenpeace, Oil, Russia

The very different reactions of European countries to Greenpeace protests was seen on Thursday when 10 Dutch armed anti-terror police boarded the environment group’s flagship outside Rotterdam port and arrested 44 activists trying to stop a Russian tanker from unloading its shipment of Arctic oil. Although the activists were taken to several Rotterdam police stations and the Rainbow Warrior towed ashore, the ship and most of the protesters were released without charge within a few hours. This represented a stark contrast to September 2013, when 20 armed Russian navy commandos boarded the group’s Arctic Sunrise icebreaker, towed it 200 miles to Murmansk and jailed the crew of 28 environmental activists and two freelance journalists for more than two months on charges of piracy and then hooliganism. Greenpeace activists, who used paragliders, climbers, a fleet of boats and inflatables in Rotterdam, said the action was a serious attempt to prevent the Gazprom tanker Mikhail Ulyanov from entering the port and was not stage-managed, despite a boatload of journalists being present and the port given advance warning of a protest.

Honoring Grassroots Environmental Heroes

April 30, 2014 Staff, www.goldmanprize.org Educate! Chemical Spill, Coal, Deforestation, Environment, Fracking, Gas, Oil

The Goldman Prize continues today with its original mission to annually honor grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. Each winner receives an award of $150,000, the largest award in the world for grassroots environmentalists. The Goldman Prize views “grassroots” leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation in the issues that affect them. Through recognizing these individual leaders, the Prize seeks to inspire other ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the natural world. The Prize Recipients The work of Goldman Prize recipients often focuses on protecting endangered ecosystems and species, combating destructive development projects, promoting sustainability, influencing environmental policies and striving for environmental justice. Prize recipients are often women and men from isolated villages or inner cities who chose to take great personal risks to safeguard the environment.

Greenpeace Readies To Confront First Arctic Oil Shipment

April 30, 2014 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org Resist! Arctic, Greenpeace, Oil

The first Arctic oil is making its way towards Europe, and environmental campaign group Greenpeace International announced that it is preparing to confront that shipment as part of its ongoing fight to save the Arctic. Russian's state-owned Gazprom sent off on April 18 70,000 tons of oil from the Prirazlomnaya oil field in the Pechora Sea to Rotterdam. The Prirazlomnaya rig is the the same one challenged last year by members of Greenpeace's "Arctic 30," who were detained and charged with hooliganism following their peaceful protest to protect the region from fossil fuel exploitation. Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior III, captained by an Arctic 30 member, set sail Monday from Rotterdam to intercept the Arctic oil shipment, though it is unclear what kind of confrontation is planned. "We do not disclose in advance what we are going to do, but I can assure you we will send a clear message to the world that this oil is very dangerous," campaigner Willem Wiskerke, who was aboard the Rainbow Warrior, told Agence France-Presse.

Indigenous Protesters Occupy Peru’s Biggest Amazon Oil Field

April 26, 2014 Dan Collyns, www.theguardian.com Resist! Indigenous Rights, Oil, pollution

Around 500 Achuar indigenous protesters have occupied Peru’s biggest oil field in the Amazon rainforest near Ecuador to demand the clean-up of decades of contamination from spilled crude oil. The oilfield operator, Argentine Pluspetrol, said output had fallen by 70% since the protesters occupied its facilities on Monday – a production drop of around 11,000 barrels per day. Native communities have taken control of a thermoelectric plant, oil tanks and key roads in the Amazonian region of Loreto, where Pluspetrol operates block 1-AB, the company said on Thursday. Protest leader, Carlos Sandi, told the Guardian that Achuar communities were being “silently poisoned” because the company Pluspetrol has not complied with a 2006 agreement to clean up pollution dating back four decades in oil block 1-AB. “Almost 80% of our population are sick due to the presence of lead and cadmium in our food and water form the oil contamination,” said Sandi, president of FECONACO, the federation of native communities in the Corrientes River.

As Pipelines & Oil By Rail Increase, Fed Agency Cuts Staff By 9%

April 25, 2014 Elizabeth Douglass, www.insideclimatenews.org Educate! Energy, Environment, Gas, Oil, Pipelines, Tar Sands

The federal regulator for petroleum pipelines and oil-toting railcars is offering employee buyouts that could shrink the agency's staff by 9 percent by mid-June—a step that has confounded observers because the agency is widely regarded as being chronically understaffed. The job cuts come at a time when PHMSA is already under considerable duress. Politicians and the public have been pushing the agency to more rigorously regulate the nation's aging pipeline network as well as the many new pipelines tied to surging domestic oil and natural gas production. A spate of damaging pipeline spills and oil-by-rail accidents is adding to the workload, exposing PHMSA's shortcomings and intensifying scrutiny of the agency.

BP: Four Years On, No Restoration in Sight

April 22, 2014 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Educate! BP, Environment, Oil, pollution

BP's oil continues to take its toll on other areas of the Louisiana marsh, where people living in low-lying coastal communities are having to contemplate moving, hence abandoning their culture and way of life, due to the erosion of oiled marsh coupled with rising seas from climate change. Despite all of this ongoing evidence of BP's deleterious impact on the Gulf of Mexico region, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow the oil giant back into Gulf waters to search for more oil leases. The impact of the BP disaster is not going away: Crude oil persists in the environment for, in some cases, decades. A full 25 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, the ongoing presence of relatively fresh oil in Prince William Sound continues to surprise scientists. Migratory and reproductive cycles of regional wildlife continue to be severely affected, and at least one species of sea turtles in the area is now nearing extinction, according to a recent report by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Migratory patterns of turtles, as well as other species, were impacted by the massive amount of oil injected into the region.

Global Climate Convergence Activists Protest BP Lake Michigan Spill

April 19, 2014 Jackie Spreadbury, www.globalclimateconvergence.org Resist! Oil, pollution, Protest

Monday afternoon, an estimated 500 gallons of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, leaked into Lake Michigan, poisoning the source of drinking water for 7 million people in and around Chicago. The BP Refinery on the lake’s shore has admitted responsibility, but has yet to take sufficient action to ensure the safety of our drinking water and ecosystem. This serves as further evidence that the reliance on fossil fuels in all its forms has serious and long term effects on the health of the planet and the people who inhabit. This is doubly true in the case of the processing or tar sands that goes on at BP’s Whiting facility. This most current spill comes after years of legal challenges to the Whiting plant that is one of the largest sources of industrial pollution in the nation.

Modern History Of Venezuela: Need For Post-Oil Economy

April 18, 2014 Edgardo Lander, www.therealnews.com Educate! Oil, Venezuela

In Venezuela, there really isn't such a peasant movement that's really pressing to have access to land. It's small. It's not--there aren't that many people in Venezuela that are willing to work in the fields. So that's a cultural issue. But it's also the fact that with the relative prices of imports and agricultural production, there's no way people can make a living out of agriculture unless it's highly subsidized. And if it's highly subsidized, then it's sort of a repeat of the rentier model in which oil finances everything else. So, on the other hand, one of the objectives of the Bolivarian Revolution is the need to have more autonomy in relation to financial capital, to sort of the global capitalist system, etc., etc. But if Venezuela concentrates all its resources into producing more and more of the basic commodity of current capitalism, it will just get more and more connected into the international networks of this capitalist model. There's no way to break away if you sort of increase and increase and increase production. So you need financing, you need foreign investment, you get into debt, and it's sort of go deeper and deeper into the network of extractive models of the predatory modes of capitalism.

A Dispatch From 350’s Divestment Trenches

April 6, 2014 Barbara G Ellis, www.truth-out.org Resist! Climate Change, Gas, Oil

Unlike yesteryear's South African divestment campaign, when major governments worked to end its apartheid policies, almost all governments are largely controlled by the industry. Despite the Ukraine's political chaos, its leaders signed a pair of $10 billion, 50-year "shared" deals permitting Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron to frack for natural gas. In the United States, exploration and drilling permits are easy to get; short-handed regulators are hobbled by budgetary cuts and deliberate red-tape policies. Even horrific rail and pipeline mishaps take years to investigate and rarely generate changes or fines beyond $50,000 when appeals are settled - often decades after they've been initiated. But that may be changing, thanks to the boiling rage of affected publics in Canada and the United States rising from the groundwork laid by 350 and allies in the environmental movement. Twenty-nine US senators just "held the Senate floor all night long to draw attention to the issue of carbon pollution and climate change," according to Oregon's Sen. Jeff Merkley. Another important ally is World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, who in January ordered the world's financiers at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to take drastic financial action against CO2polluters

New Report Details Threats From Pipeline Expansion Proposal

April 1, 2014 Mark Westlund, www.sierraclub.org Educate! Environment, Oil, Pipeline

A new report released today by the Sierra Club and a coalition of 13 other organizations examines the proposed expansion of the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline and concludes that there are significant threats to water, health and climate. The report, All Risk, No Reward: The Alberta Clipper Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion, comes in advance of a rally to stop the Alberta Clipper expansion that will take place before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission public hearing in St. Paul, MN on April 3. “Last week the BP Whiting tar sands refinery in Indiana dumped crude oil into Lake Michigan,” says Michael Marx, Sierra Club beyond oil campaign director. “Expanding the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline would move towards more dirty, dangerous tar sands crude through the region, which would put American and Tribal lands and waters, including the Great Lakes, at risk of more devastating oil spills.”

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