Tag Archives: Big Oil

‘North Sea Fossil Free’: Activists in 6 Countries Protest ‘Unhinged’ Oil and Gas Development

“Going full steam ahead with new North Sea oil and gas is a sure fire route to the worst climate scenarios,” one campaigner said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 3-16-2024 by Common Dreams

The “oil slicks” performance artist group demonstrates the impacts of a potential oil spill on Scotland’s Moray Firth as part of a North Sea-wide day of action on March 16, 2024. Photo: Extinction Rebellion Scotland/X

Climate activists in six North Sea countries came together on Saturday to carry out acts of civil disobedience in protest of their governments’ continued fossil fuel development.

Demonstrators in the United KingdomNorway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands blockaded roads, ports, and refineries; dropped banners; and held solidarity concerts as part of the North Sea Fossil Free campaign to demand that their governments align their plans for the shared body of water with the Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

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‘Death Sentence’: Reports Call for End to Big Oil’s US Sacrifice Zones

“People’s lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business,” one human rights researcher said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 1-25-2024 by Common Dreams

Cancer Alley. Photo: Gines A. Sanchez/flickr/CC

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published reports on Thursday detailing how the fossil fuel industry has harmed the health and environment of communities in Texas and Louisiana, and how state and federal regulators have failed to protect them.

The Amnesty report, The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA, focused on the Houston Ship Channel, which has some of the worst air pollution measurements in the U.S. The HRW report, “We’re Dying Here”: The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone, looked at the state’s Cancer Alley, an 85-mile zone along the Mississippi that reportedly has the highest concentration of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants in the Western Hemisphere.

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Supreme Court Rejects Bid by API, Exxon, and Koch to Kill Climate Case

“Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas,” said one campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 1-8-2024 by Common Dreams

The Pine Bend oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, run by Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Photo: Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons/CC

For the third time in less than a year, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a key case against the fossil fuel industry to proceed in state court, delivering a win for the movement to make polluters pay for driving the climate emergency.

“This decision is another step forward for Minnesota’s efforts to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for their climate lies and the harm they’ve caused,” said Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles, pointing to the previous denials of other cases last April and May.

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‘Disastrous’: Michigan Regulators Approve Enbridge Line 5 Expansion

“Today’s decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of tribal nations,” said one Indigenous leader.

By Julia Conley. Published 12-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists in Michigan gather around a sign reading, “Line 5: people or pipeline? Which side are you on?” (Photo Ben Jealous/X)

Days after climate advocates applauded Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signing of a package of clean energy bills that one campaigner said would “translate into better air, water, and health for everyone,” state regulators took several steps back from a sustainable future as they approved a key permit for Enbridge’s Line 5 expansion project beneath the Great Lakes.

In a 2-0 vote with one member abstaining, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) approved siting for the project, granting Canadian oil firm Enbridge permission to build a concrete tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac—which connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron—to house a four-mile section of its 645-mile petroleum pipeline.

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Texas Officials Reject Textbooks Over Climate Science

“The same bad actors who are calling for racist, homophobic, and transphobic book bans are also calling for climate denial in science textbooks,” said one critic.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-17-2023 by Common Dreams

Image: National Center for Science Education

Seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for Texas 8th graders were rejected Friday by the Republican-controlled state Board of Education because they propose solutions to the climate emergency or were published by a company with an environmental, social, and governance policy.

The Texas Tribune reported that the 15-member board, which for the first time was required to include climate education for 8th graders, approved five of 12 proposed science textbooks, but called on their publishers to remove content deemed false or presenting a negative portrayal of oil and gas in the nation’s biggest fossil fuel producer.

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60% of US Oil and Gas Infrastructure Now Protected by Anti-Protest Laws: Greenpeace

Fossil fuel companies have contributed millions of dollars to legislators who sponsored such laws, according to a new report.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 10-25-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Joe Brusky/Overpass Light Brigade/flickr/cc

In the seven years since the massive protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, the fossil fuel industry and their allies in politics and law enforcement have been hard at work to prevent a repeat: Around 60% of oil and gas infrastructure in the U.S. is now shielded by anti-protest laws that make direct action much riskier for activists and frontline communities who want to protect their local and global home from dangerous pollution, a new Greenpeace report has found.

The report, Dollars vs. Democracy 2023: Inside the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Playbook to Suppress Protest and Dissent in the United States, reveals that fossil fuel companies made up nine of the 10 most determined lobbyists for anti-protest measures since 2017 and that 25 oil, gas, coal, and energy companies contributed more than $5 million to legislators who sponsored these laws.

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Now End All the Drilling, Campaigners Say as Biden Rescinds Arctic Refuge Leases

“Our sacred land is only temporarily safe from oil and gas development,” said one First Nations leader, urging Congress and the White House to “permanently protect the Arctic Refuge.”

By Julia Conley. Published 9-6-2023 by Common Dreams

Polar bear, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Photo: Alan D. Wilson/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Indigenous tribes and climate campaigners applauded the Biden administration’s announcement Wednesday that it will cancel all existing oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and ban drilling across 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, while hundreds of groups also called on the U.S. Interior Department to go further on fossil fuel leasing.

Biden’s move in Alaska will reverse former Republican President Donald Trump’s approval of a 2017 law that required leasing in the Arctic Refuge, the nation’s largest area of pristine wilderness which is home to vulnerable species including polar bears, migratory birds, and caribou.

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US Billboard Campaign Blasts Fossil Fuel Giants for Causing Extreme Heat

“From Alaska to Maui, our communities are struggling to survive the rapidly worsening impacts of the climate crisis, all the while, Big Oil is raking in billions at our expense.”

By Julia Conley. Published 8-24-2023 by Common Dreams

A billboard in Austin, Texas shows a U.S. map with high temperatures across the nation. (Photo: Fossil Free Media)

As about 111 million people in nearly two dozen states continued to face heat advisories, with temperatures reaching as high at 115°F in some cities, the nonprofit media lab Fossil Free Media unveiled a multicity campaign with one simple goal: ensuring that all Americans understand that the intense heatwaves across much of the country this summer have not been a natural phenomenon, but the result of continued fossil fuel extraction.

Starting Thursday drivers along stretches of highway in Phoenix, Arizona; Austin, Texas; and Fresno, California will pass by prominent billboards displaying a map of record-breaking temperatures that have been recorded across the U.S. this summer.

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Groups ‘Extremely Disappointed’ by Ruling But Vow to Keep Fighting Mountain Valley Pipeline

“It is clear to us that the top levers of power in this country do not serve the good of the people of Appalachia, who they have continued to sacrifice for the whims of a corrupt, reckless fossil fuel corporation,” said one activist.

By Jessica Corbett Published 8-11=2023 by Common Dreams

The Mountain Valley Pipeline. Photo: NRDC

Local and national climate campaigns on Friday expressed disappointment over an appellate court’s dismissal of challenges to a partially built fracked gas pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia but pledged to continue their efforts to kill the project.

Citing a section of the debt ceiling law that President Joe Biden negotiated with congressional Republicans this spring, a three-judge panel from the mountain-valley-pipeline-dismissal dismissed cases in which green groups challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered Species Act approvals for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) as well as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s authorizations for the Jefferson National Forest.

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Montana Train Derailment Raises Fears of Similar Disasters on Proposed Uinta Basin Railway

The Stillwater County, Montana sheriff’s office said it was a “great stroke of luck” that none of the train cars were carrying oil that would have polluted the Yellowstone River.

By Julia Conley Published 6-25-2023 by Common Dreams

A freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed on a bridge in Stillwater County, Montana on June 25, 2023. (Photo: @MontanaFWP/Twitter)

A freight train derailment and the collapse of a bridge over the Yellowstone River in Montana on Saturday raised alarm as several cars carrying asphalt and molten sulfur tumbled into the river, prompting officials to take emergency measures at nearby water plants.

The incident also brought to mind for some critics the Biden administration’s plan to move forward with a railway project along the Colorado River—one that could place the drinking water of 40 million people at risk as trains transport crude oil from eastern Utah’s Uinta Basin to national rail lines.

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