Tag Archives: Pipeline

‘Disaster’: Burst Pipeline Sprays Crude Oil Into Ecuadorian Amazon

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“Spills have become a part of our daily life, and we live with the contamination for decades. The oil industry has only brought us death and destruction,” said one campaigner.

By Julia Conley.  Published 1-30-2022 by Common Dreams

On April 7, 2021, undreds of Indigenous Kichwa people from the Ecuadorian Amazon marched through the city of Coca to mark one year since the country’s largest oil spill in recent history. Photo: Amazon Watch

Indigenous environmental defenders in Ecuador on Sunday pointed to a pipeline rupture in the Amazon rainforest as “the exact reason why we oppose oil extraction” as the pipeline operator temporarily halted pumping crude oil.

A pipeline constructed by OCP Ecuador burst on Friday after a rockslide, according to NBC News. Videos posted on social media by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and Amazon Frontlines showed oil spraying out of the pipeline into the rainforest. Continue reading →

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Sioux Tribe Withdraws as Cooperating Agency Over Dakota Access Pipeline Threat

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“The prospect of an oil spill during such low water is truly scary,” says the tribe’s Water Resources Department administrator.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 1-27-2022 by Common Dreams.

Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Thursday confirmed that it is no longer a “cooperating agency” for the Dakota Access oil pipeline and demanded federal action to address concerns that a leak could affect Lake Oahe, the tribe’s only source of fresh drinking water.

Janet Alkire, the tribe’s newly elected chairperson, warned in a statement that low water levels resulting from “misplaced priorities in the operation of Oahe and the other dams on the Missouri River” could affect cleanup plans in the event of a Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) spill. Continue reading →

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Prosecutor Sought Funding From Oil Giant Enbridge to Jail Line 3 Water Protectors: Report

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“First the police, now the prosecutors—who’s next to violate constitutional rights of water protectors and ask Big Oil to pay for it?”

By Julia Conley.  Published 1-6-2022 by Common Dreams

Sheriff’s deputies and police make arrests after their mobile field force (MFF) retook the occupied Enbridge Line 3 Two Inlets pumping station.. Photo: Unicorn Riot

With Canadian oil giant Enbridge pouring more than $4 million into a fund that was used by the law enforcement agencies which have arrested hundreds of people for protesting the company’s thousand-mile-long tar sands pipeline, the prosecutor who is bringing charges against the environmental defenders believed he was also entitled to benefit from the fund, according to an independent investigation.

The Center for Protest Law and Litigation (CPLL) revealed Thursday that Jonathan Frieden, the lead prosecutor seeking to jail hundreds of opponents to the Line 3 pipeline, sought more than $12,000 last July from the so-called Line 3 Public Safety Escrow Trust, which the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) ordered Enbridge to pay into as a condition of the pipeline’s construction. Continue reading →

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Trouble on the Belarus-Poland border: What you need to know about the migrant crisis manufactured by Belarus’ leader

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Hopes for a better future?
Maxim Guchek/BELTA/AFP via Getty Images

Tatsiana Kulakevich, University of South Florida

Using migrants as pawns is perhaps nothing new. But rarely do you have a situation in which one country encourages a migrant crisis on its own border for nakedly geopolitical reasons.

That is what appears to be happening at the Poland-Belarus border, where violence has broken out between Polish border guards and Middle Eastern migrants who traveled there via Belarus, and who are set on reaching the European Union. Meanwhile, there is growing concern over those camped out in freezing conditions. Continue reading →

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‘Like It Never Happened’: Federal Judge Tosses Trump Attack on Clean Water Rule

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Denying a Biden administration request to temporarily retain the rule, the judge reestablished “the careful balance of state and federal power to protect clean water that Congress intended when it wrote the Clean Water Act.”

By Brett Wilkins is staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10=22=2021

A salmon jumps as it swims upstream against a waterfall. (Photo: josullivan.59/Flickr/cc)

Environmental and Indigenous advocates on Friday cheered as a federal judge rejected a Biden administration request to temporarily keep in place a Trump-era Clean Water Act rule that one attorney said would have “devastated” states’ ability to manage their rivers.

On Thursday, Judge William H. Alsup of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco threw out a June 2020 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule changing the Clean Water Act Section 401 certification process to allow federal agencies to approve large projects—including fossil fuel pipelines, hydroelectric dams, industrial plants, wetland developments, and municipal facilities—against the wishes of states and Native American tribes. Continue reading →

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155 More Arrested for ‘People Vs. Fossil Fuels’ Protest at White House

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“We’re coming every day of this week to tell Biden: Stop this madness.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-12-2021

Throughout the week, Indigenous leaders and climate activists are leading protests outside the White House to demand that President Joe Biden stop fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Photo: Patrick Young/Twitter

At least 155 more protesters were arrested outside the White House Tuesday as part of a weeklong action pressuring President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency and end all new fossil fuel projects.

Guided by the theme “fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis,” the latest demonstration followed over 100 arrests on Monday, when protesters marked Indigenous Peoples’ Day and drew attention to polluting operations including Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands project and the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Continue reading →

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Water Protectors Challenge Minnesota AG Keith Ellison’s Silence on Line 3 Pipeline

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“What is your plan?” one demonstrator asked while interrupting a speech by Ellison. “Are you going to take a stand?”

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-24-2021

Camp Migizi co-founder Taysha Martineau appeals to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison after a protest against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in St. Paul on September 23, 2021. (Photo: Movement to Stop Line 3)

Water protectors fighting to stop Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline expansion interrupted a Thursday evening speech by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge the Democrat’s silence on the multi-billion-dollar project, which violates Anishinaabe treaty rights while endangering local ecosystems, Indigenous communities, and the global climate.

“In 2015 at an anti-tar sands rally, you promised to stand with the First Nations brothers and sisters—that’s a quote—and defend Mother Earth,” one protester shouted out as he was removed from the St. Paul auditorium hosting a ceremony for the new dean of the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. “And yet you’ve been silent on Line 3… What is your plan? Are you going to take a stand?” Continue reading →

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Report Reveals Indigenous Resistance Disrupts Quarter of US and Canadian Emissions

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“The numbers don’t lie. Indigenous peoples have long led the fight to protect Mother Earth and the only way forward is to center Indigenous knowledge and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams.  Published 9-1-2021

Water protectors stop construction of Energy Transfers Partners’ Bayou Bridge Pipeline in 2017. (Photo:Indigenous Environmental Network)

Indigenous resistance to fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada over a recent decade has stopped or delayed nearly a quarter of the nations’ annual planet-heating pollution, according to a report released Wednesday.

The greenhouse gas pollution for Turtle Island, the land now known to settler nation-states as North America, totaled 6.56 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019—5.83 billion metric tons CO2e for the U.S. and 727.43 million metric tons CO2e for Canada. Continue reading →

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‘We’re Staying’: Line 3 Opponents Camp at Minnesota Capitol to Protest Oil Pipeline

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“The cops are gathered here by the hundred and the governor’s brand new fence glimmers in the background, but our spirit is resolved.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-26-2021

Demonstrators protest the Line 3 pipeline on the grounds of the Minnesota capitol building on August 25, 2021. (Photo: RootsAction)

With Enbridge on the verge of completing its multibillion-dollar Line 3 pipeline, thousands of Indigenous leaders and environmentalists brought their protests against the sprawling tar sands project to the grounds of the Minnesota state capitol building on Wednesday to demand that lawmakers intervene before the dirty oil starts flowing.

Roughly 2,000 demonstrators—including Indigenous leaders who marched over 250 miles along the pipeline’s route—rallied at the capitol Wednesday afternoon and hundreds stayed through the night as Minnesota police officers guarded the building’s perimeter, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence installed in anticipation of the protest. Continue reading →

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Planet’s Vital Signs Are Reaching Dangerous ‘Tipping Points’ Amid Climate Crisis, Scientists Warn

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“We need to stop treating the climate emergency as a stand-alone issue—global heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-28-2021

Human activity may be pushing the climate beyond dangerous ‘tipping points,’ say 14,000 scientists. As the extreme drought emergency continues in California, historically low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville on July 22, 2021 in Oroville, California. Photo: NOAA

More than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down economies around the world and sharply reduced worldwide travel—sparking speculation among some that emissions would plummet as a result—a coalition of scientists said in a paper published Wednesday that the planet is nonetheless reaching multiple “tipping points,” with levels of sea ice melt, deforestation, and other markers revealing that urgent action is needed to mitigate the climate emergency.

“The extreme climate events and patterns that we’ve witnessed over the last several years — not to mention the last several weeks — highlight the heightened urgency with which we must address the climate crisis,” said Philip Duffy, co-author of the study and executive director of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts. Continue reading →

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