Big Oil

By Dan Collyns - The Gaurdian, April 25, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

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.

Pluspetrol, the biggest oil and natural gas producer in Peru, has operated the oil fields since 2001. It took over from Occidental Petroleum, which began drilling in 1971, and, according to the government, had not cleaned up contamination either.

Last year, Peru declared an environmental state of emergency in the oil field.

But Sandi said the state had failed to take “concrete measures or compensate the native people” for the environmental damage caused.

Read the rest of the article here.

By Justin Mikulka - DeSmog Blog, April 15, 2010

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Ken Stanton’s 400-cow dairy farm lies in the path of the proposed Constitution Pipeline, which would carry fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York.

Three generations of Stanton’s family spoke in opposition to the pipeline during a packed public comment session at a hearing at Cobleskill-Richmondville high school on March 31.

“The pipeline would cut through my land. With eminent domain, there’s nothing I can do. It doesn’t feel like America anymore,” Stanton told the Daily Gazette.  

It’s people like Stanton who stand to lose in the face of new fossil fuel developments, despite the job-creation claims of industry.

Until recently, new projects were justified in the name of American energy independence, but with the new push to lift the Jones act to allow for crude oil exports and the big PR effort to ramp up liquid petroleum gas (LPG) exports, the new spin is job creation. 

The American Petroleum Institute has abandoned the energy independence approach and gone with the new argument about jobs — and the media was happy to broadcast the message.  From CNBC:

By lifting restrictions on crude oil exports, the U.S. economy could generate more than a quarter of a million jobs and save consumers billions in energy costs, the American Petroleum Institute said Monday.

In addition to the promise of jobs, the institute is claiming exporting more crude oil will lower prices for American consumers. This is a bold claim given that this past year propane prices in the U.S. hit record prices, coinciding with an exports increasing by 75 percent.

By Presente - April 4, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The nation’s largest online Latino organizing group, Presente.org, is joining the fight to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline today, on the grounds that the project would disproportionately impact Latino communities- both by exacerbating climate change and by poisoning the largely Latino communities that live near refineries for tar sands in Houston, TX.

“We are calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline,” said Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of Presente.org. “Latino communities in America are concentrated in the areas most affected by climate change— from the drought stricken Southwest to coastal cities like Miami which are most threatened by rising sea levels. Additionally, refineries that would process Keystone XL’s tar sands are concentrated in Latino communities in Texas— sickening our children and families with their toxic pollution. We are not willing to sacrifice our health, climate, and safety for the sake of Big Oil profits. We urge the President to keep his promise to address climate change and start building a clean energy economy— and the first step to doing that is rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

Presente.org recently polled their more than 300,000 members across the country and found that environmental justice and climate change were second only to immigration in importance to their members. Formal polls of the Latino community across the country also reflect that— and that they also are most supportive of using government funds to combat climate change. In addition, because fossil fuel infrastructure, like refineries for oil, are centered in largely low income communities of color, Latinos have disproportionately suffered from asthma, cancer, and other pollution related illnesses stemming from America’s dependence on fossil fuels. For these reasons, Presente.org has decided to make environmental justice and the fight against climate change a central priority in the coming year.

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With more than 300,000 members, Presente is a major national organization dedicated to amplifying the political voices of Latino communities in the United States.

NRDC poll on Latino communities’ opinions on climate change: http://docs.nrdc.org/globalwarming/files/glo_14012301a.pdf

By Eric Florip - The Columbian, March 31, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

From the start, the proposed oil terminal at the Port of Vancouver generated heated debate over what such a facility would mean for the community.

But in recent weeks, the local conversation has also been shaped by an incident hundreds of miles from Vancouver.

Opponents of the terminal have pointed to a Tesoro Corp.-owned oil refinery in Martinez, Calif., that saw a chemical release burn two workers on Feb. 12. The severity of those burns has been disputed, and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board alleges Tesoro blocked the agency from fully investigating the incident, at one point barring inspectors from entering the facility.

Tesoro is one of the companies behind the proposed oil terminal in Vancouver.

During a recent swing through Vancouver, Tesoro officials adamantly denied hindering the CSB’s investigation — despite a letter from the agency directly contradicting Tesoro’s account of what happened. In it, the CSB’s three members blasted Tesoro for downplaying the seriousness of the workers’ injuries, and for preventing the CSB from performing its federally mandated duties.

Tesoro officials say that’s not true.

“We deeply respect all of our regulators,” Keith Casey, Tesoro’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, told The Columbian last week. “We have fully cooperated with all of our regulators, and we never barred the CSB from that facility.”

By Tara Lohan - Alternet, March 11, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is having a hard time maintaining his green image. Like President Obama, Brown has stumped about the dangers of climate change and the need to take action. But Brown’s message runs afoul of his own actions to open California to more oil and gas drilling enabled by hydraulic fracturing and other extreme extraction methods.

Demonstrators protested the governor and the president’s hypocrisy on the issue of fracking (Obama’s been singing the praises of natural gas) when the two were part of a climate change task force (or “task farce” as demonstrators made clear) in Los Angeles last month.

It’s not the first time Brown has come under attack since signing SB4 in September, a law to regulate fracking in California. Supporters of SB4, introduced by Fran Pavley, have called it the “toughest law in the country” (though it’s an extremely low bar) but opponents say it doesn’t go nearly far enough in protecting people and the environment, and until more is known about the dangers and health impacts the practice should be halted.

Thus far fracking had taken place in California with little regulation. Almost every major environmental organization pulled their support for SB4 as the bill became more watered down as it passed through the state legislature. A Los Angeles Times editorial summed it up: “We previously endorsed the bill, and Pavley deserves praise for trying, but at this point SB4 is so flawed that it would be better to kill it and press for more serious legislation next year.”

By Thor Benson - Vice.Com, March 27, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Richmond is tucked into California’s western tricep, a former wine town with a population just over 100,000. Under the administration of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, the town is the largest city in the United States with a Green Party mayor. It’s also an oil town—in 1901, Standard Oil set up a tank farm, choosing the location for its easy access to San Francisco Bay. Soon after, a western terminus of the Santa Fe Railroad was built in Richmond to handle the outflux of crude. Over the course of the 20th century, Standard Oil became the Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL), and later, Chevron.

Throughout the 90s, the Richmond refinery was fined thousands of dollars for unsafe conditions, explosions, major fires, and chemical leaks, as the plant oozed chlorine and sulfur trioxide into Richmond’s atmosphere. In August of 2012, the Richmond refinery exploded after Chevron ignored the warning of corroding pipes from the local safety board. The disaster was linked to aging pipes, which were simply clamped instead of replaced altogether. Some 15,000 residents in the surrounding area were forced to seek medical treatment, and Chevron’s CEO, John Watson, got a $7.5 million dollar raise.

Now that some time has passed, Chevron has decided to modernize the refinery and has simultaneously sponsored the creation of the Richmond Standard, an online newspaper that is decidedly positive about anything the company does. The paper, whose name is a sly reference to the company that Chevron grew out of, covers minimally reported local stories on crime, public meetings, and sports. It also features a section called “Chevron Speaks,” which works as a place for the company to put forth its ideology. According to SF Gate, “the idea of the nation’s second-largest oil company funding a local news site harkens back to an era of journalism when business magnates often owned newspapers to promote their personal, financial, or political agendas. Now that mainstream newspapers are struggling to survive, online news sites are testing ways to fund their operations.”