Tag Archives: Oil Industry

Crude Oil, Fracking, Natural gas, Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT), Public Health

International coalition to put fracking “on trial”

Repost from Oil Change International

Fracking “Goes on Trial”

By Andy Rowell, July 22, 2015

Just as the British Government slashes subsidies for solar power and gears up to open up large swathes of the countryside to fracking, a coalition of human rights lawyers and academics have announced an international tribunal to put fracking “on trial”.

Based on a descendent of the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal of the sixties, the so-called Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), which is based in Rome, is an internationally recognized public opinion tribunal. It functions independently of state jurisdictions.

From June 1979 to the present date, the PPT has held some 40 sessions, including examining the world’s worst chemical disaster at Bhopal in the early eighties which killed thousands of people, injuring hundreds of thousands.

Tribunals apply internationally recognized human rights law and policy to cases brought before them and are nearly identical to traditional courtroom proceedings.

What this allows is ordinary people to compile and submit prima facie evidence about how the shale gas industry has impacted their health, their environment, their livelihood or human rights.

Hearings will be held both in the United States, which has been at the forefront of the fracking boom and the UK, and will take place in front of five to seven jurists experts in international human rights law.

This said, the PPT will be inviting witness testimony from citizens all over the world who will be invited to also hold preliminary mini-tribunals in their own country.

The experts will then decide whether there is sufficient evidence to indict certain nation states on charges of “failing to adequately uphold universal human rights as a result of allowing unconventional oil and gas extraction in their jurisdictions.”

One of the organisers, Dr. Tom Kerns, Director of the Environment and Human Rights Advisory in Oregon USA said: “The Tribunal will consider the human rights dimensions of a range of potential impacts: human and animal health, environmental, climatic, seismic, hydrologic and economic impacts, as well as those on local physical and social infrastructures.”

Dr. Damien Short, Director of the Human Rights Consortium at the University of London, and another one of the instigators of the PPT, added that “Fracking has taken place around the world in spite of serious public opposition and with large numbers of people alleging that their human rights have been ignored by those who supposedly represent them. This PPT aims to consider those allegations in an even handed and judicial way.”

The hearings are not due to start until the Spring of 2017, giving communities affected by fracking enough time to compile the evidence of impact and harm.

Meanwhile, the British Government’s plans to slash subsidies to solar was widely condemned yesterday. Britain’s sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas labeled the Government plans as “short sighted”.

“This cut would further undermine Britain’s commitment to meeting our climate change targets and deepen our addiction to dirty fossil fuels,” she said.

For more on the PPT go here.

California Regulation, Climate Change, Climate change denial, Fracking, Global warming, Oil Industry, Oil producers, Vatican conference on climate change

As California pumps out oil, Gov. Brown says world must cut back

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate)
[Editor:  The San Francisco Chronicle ran three (!) stories on the Vatican Conference on climate change, including two rather stiff challenges to California Governor Jerry Brown.  See below for one.  See also: Editorial-A climate pilgrimage, …and Mayor touts city’s green vehicles at pope’s event.  – RS]

As California pumps out oil, Gov. Brown says world must cut back

By David R. Baker, July 21, 2015 4:02 pm
Gov. Jerry Brown delivers his speech during the conference at the Vatican. Photo: Gregorio Borgia, Associated Press
Gov. Jerry Brown delivers his speech during the conference at the Vatican. Photo: Gregorio Borgia, Associated Press (1st of 10 images – click for more).

One-third of the world’s oil must stay in the ground if humanity hopes to avoid the worst effects of global warming, Gov. Jerry Brown told a climate conference at the Vatican Tuesday.

“We are going to have to set a clear goal,” Brown told a crowd of mayors and public officials from around the world. “And that goal is almost unimaginable. One-third of the oil that we know exists as reserves can never be taken out of the ground. Fifty percent of the gas can never be used and over 90 percent of the coal. Now, that is a revolution.”

For an American politician of Brown’s stature, it was a rare statement. Even those who acknowledge the threat of climate change prefer not to address the idea that tapping all of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves would trigger catastrophic levels of warming, a notion widely embraced in the environmental movement.

But Brown’s comment was particularly noteworthy for another reason.

California, for all its efforts to fight climate change, remains America’s third-largest oil producing state, out-pumped only by Texas and North Dakota. And while Brown wants to cut California’s use of oil by 50 percent in the next 15 years, he has generally supported oil production within the state’s borders.

Brown has for years refused to ban hydraulic fracturing, preferring to regulate it instead. He has argued that finding a way to tap the oil trapped within California’s Monterey Shale formation could produce an economic boom for the state. His stance has infuriated many environmentalists, even as they laud his efforts to boost renewable power and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So Brown’s comments, at the Vatican global symposium on climate change and modern slavery, raised a few eyebrows back home.

“We agree, fossil fuels need to stay in the ground,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups pushing for a fracking ban. “That’s why Gov. Brown can’t be a climate leader and expand fossil fuel production in his own state. Climate leaders do not frack.”

Brown urged the gathered mayors to push for climate action within their own countries, saying they needed to “light a fire” under their national leaders. And he took aim at opponents of such action, saying they were “bamboozling” the public with a well-financed disinformation campaign.

“We have very powerful opposition that, in at least my country, spends billions on trying to keep from office people such as yourselves and elect troglodytes and other deniers of the obvious science,” Brown said.

Natural gas, Oil Industry, Solar energy

Oil and gas industry the next major market for solar power

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor:  How’s this for conflicted?  Go figure ….  – RS]

Fremont firm to build huge solar plant at Oman oil field

By David R. Baker, July 8, 2015 4:57pm
GlassPoint Solar's pilot plant in Oman. The company uses solar power to generate steam, which is then pumped into oil fields to squeeze out more petroleum. Photo: GlassPoint Solar Photo: GlassPoint Solar
GlassPoint Solar’s pilot plant in Oman. The company uses solar power to generate steam, which is then pumped into oil fields to squeeze out more petroleum. Photo: GlassPoint Solar Photo: GlassPoint Solar

Solar power and fossil fuels tend to be viewed as natural enemies.

But on Wednesday, a Fremont company signed a deal to build a massive solar power plant in the Omani desert, creating steam to squeeze petroleum out of an aging oil field.

GlassPoint Solar’s new plant — named Miraah, or “mirror” in Arabic — will be by far the largest facility of its kind in the world, generating 1,021 megawatts of thermal energy. For comparison, a single reactor at California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant generates about 3,400 thermal megawatts.

The plant will help Petroleum Development Oman, the country’s largest oil producer, wrest thick and viscous crude from the Amal oil field. Pumping steam underground lowers the viscosity of the oil, making it easier to extract.

The practice, which is common in California, typically requires burning large amounts of natural gas to generate the steam. Oman, however, doesn’t have big gas reserves of its own. GlassPoint’s solar plant, covering more than a square mile, will save 5.6 trillion British thermal units of gas each year. Used in a power plant, the same amount of gas could produce enough electricity for 209,000 people in Oman.

“The use of solar for oil recovery is a long-term strategic solution to develop (the Oman oil company’s) viscous oil portfolio and reduce consumption of valuable natural gas, which is needed elsewhere to diversify Oman’s economy and create economic growth,” said Raoul Restucci, the oil company’s managing director.

Neither company disclosed the project’s cost Wednesday.

Founded in 2008, GlassPoint uses a variation on the same solar thermal technology that has been generating electricity at power plants in Southern California for decades.

Instead of solar panels, the company employs curved troughs of mirrors to focus sunlight on a tube filled with water. The superheated water generates steam.

The troughs are light enough that a strong breeze could knock them out of focus. So GlassPoint plants the troughs inside a greenhouse made of glass. Automated washing machines on the roof clear off grime — a key feature in a country, such as Oman, that’s prone to dust storms.

GlassPoint already built a small plant in Oman to demonstrate the idea. But the Miraah project will be more than 100 times larger, consisting of 36 greenhouse modules.

“The oil and gas industry is the next major market for solar energy,” said GlassPoint CEO Rod MacGregor. Indeed, one of the company’s early investors was Royal Dutch Shell.

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fossil fuels, Lac-Mégantic, Natural gas, Oil Industry, Rail industry

Roundup of Actions Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Vermont and NY (PHOTOS)

Repost from EarthFirst! Newswire

Roundup of Actions Against Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Vermont and NY (PHOTOS)

July 7th, 2015

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from Rising Tide Vermont

* 150+ w/dozens occupying the tracks in Ticonderoga to ‪#‎StopOilTrains‬.
* Four arrested blockading VT fracked gas pipeline construction.
* TWAC still locked down to CNG truck on way to IP mill.

Disrupting Vermont Gas Systems

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from Burlington Free Press

About 30 protesters disrupted work at a Vermont Gas Systems construction site in Williston on Tuesday morning.

Four protesters were arrested on suspicion that they unlawfully trespassed to stop work at the construction site, said Williston police Chief Todd Shepard. Williston police had given protesters until 7 a.m. to move.

Vermont State Police, Essex police and South Burlington police were also on scene. Shepard said about 14 law enforcement representatives had arrived by the end of the protest.

Thomas Buckley, 34, of Westford and Martha Waterman, 25, of Charlotte chained themselves together across a ditch digging machine. Avery Pittman, 25, of Burlington was later also chained to Waterman.

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Buckley, Waterman and Pittman were taken into custody before 9 a.m. Grayson Flory, 28, of Los Angeles was also arrested after refusing to leave the site at 310 Hurricane Lane.

All protesters arrested were carried from the site by law enforcement, but they did not actively resist arrest otherwise, Shepard said.

Each protester has been released from police custody and issued a citation to appear on Thursday in Vermont Superior Court in Burlington, Shepard said.

Occupation of the Tracks

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Flotilla

from Rising Tide Vermont: More than a hundred people converged in Ticonderoga, NY today for a flotilla and symbolic blockade to ‪#StopOilTrains.

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Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the Lac-Megantic oil train disaster, in which a train carrying fracked oil exploded and leveled the small Quebec town, killing 47 people.

In the so-called Champlain valley, tens of millions of gallons of fracked oil are transported annually along the lake, and industry is making plans to start bringing tar sands through.

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TWAC Throws Down

from Rising Tide Vermont: “Our friends at the Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp (TWAC) also stopped a truck on its way to deliver compressed fracked natural gas to International Paper. One person has locked their body to the back of the truck preventing it from making a delivery. Fracked gas by truck is just as dirty and dangerous as fracked gas in a pipeline!”

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(TWAC is a group of activists who identify as Trans*, Transgender, Genderqueer, and Gender non-conforming as well as anyone who identifies as a woman regardless of whether they were assigned female at birth)

Released from Jail!!!

The four people who were arrested this morning blocking the construction of the fracked gas pipeline have all been released. Please share and donate to our legal fund to support this fierce escalation of resistance against extreme energy! Donate to our legal fund at: http://bit.ly/J7legal

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