Fracking

On Monday, January 7th, Canadian federal police raided the Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidumt’en Territory on unceded indigenous land in what is commonly known as British Columbia, Canada. The Access Point is the forward position of a pipeline occupation held primarily by the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. The Unist’ot’en have been occupying this part of their territory for nine years to block numerous oil and gas pipelines from destroying their territory. ...

A drilling site next to farms and homes in Weld County, Colo. Stephanie Malin/Flight provided by LightHawk, CC BY-ND by Stephanie Malin, Colorado State University / The Conversation From the start, President Donald Trump’s administration has made dismantling regulations, especially for the oil, gas and coal industries, a top priority. And though his claims of rolling back more regulations than any other administration are exaggerated, Trump’s team has tried hard to erase many environmental and energy-related rules. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Trump have teamed up with the Republican-led Congress to get federal agencies on the case, by streamlining environmental permitting and attempting other sweeping changes. ...

by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance “One person died and another was badly burned when a gas well exploded here last year,” my friend Adam says, pointing to an oil well set back a hundred yards from the road. We’re on the plains beneath the Front Range in Colorado, where the Rockies meet the flatlands. Oil country. Wells and fracking rigs are everywhere, scattered among the rural homes and inside city limits. ...

Featured image: On August 31, 2016, “Happy” American Horse from the Sicangu Nation locked himself to construction equipment as a direct action against the Dakota Access pipeline. Credit: Desiree Kane, CCBY 3.0 by Steve Horn / DeSmog On the heels of Iowa and Ohio, Wyoming has become the third state to introduce a bill criminalizing the type of activities undertaken by past oil and gas pipeline protesters. One of the Wyoming bill’s co-sponsors even says it was inspired by the protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access pipeline, and a sheriff involved in policing those protests testified in support of the bill at a recent hearing. Wyoming’s bill is essentially a copy-paste version of template legislation produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ...

by Protect Orange County and Stop the Minisink Compression Station In a move that is being widely celebrated by both activists and national environmental rights groups, this afternoon, the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit in NY issued an emergency stay of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) “Notice to Proceed with Construction”, issued on October 27, 2017 to the Millennium Valley Lateral Pipeline. The stay halts construction activities until a hearing can be held by a three judge panel. ...

Featured image: Casey Camp-Horinek with her granddaughter by Movement Rights / via Intercontinental Cry San Francisco, CA – After suffering for years with poisoned water and serious health issues due to fracking and injection wells on and near their reservation the governing body of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma voted to pass a statute recognizing the rights of nature on Friday, October 20, 2017. When enacted, the Ponca will be the first tribal nation to recognize the rights of nature into statutory law. ...

by Traditional Mi’kmag 1st & 7th District Chiefs / Intercontinental Cry Today, we traditional council chiefs from the 1st and the 7th Districts of Mi’kma’ki have gathered at the Junexit Banquet organized by the Camp by the River. We are here not only to support the occupation that has been set up on August 7th against Junex but also to assert our inherent rights and title over our unceded and unsurrendered territory, as affirmed by the 1763 Royal Proclamation. We assert our presence here to protect our territory under the Protection clauses for unceded lands, as protected by Constitutional Rights, Charter Rights, Human Rights, and International Rights. ...

Featured image: Fracking well. The damage that causes earthquakes seems to occur after the drilling, when the wastewater is injected deep underground, stimulating existing fault lines. Indigenous and other communities want Colombia to join France, Germany, Scotland and Bulgaria in banning fracking. By Thinkstock. by Rick Kearns / Indian Country Today Media Network Fracking is coming to indigenous Colombian territories and other parts of the country, and activists are trying to halt the process. ...

By ResistAIM Brooklyn, NY - Concerned New Yorkers blocked the doors of National Grid’s downtown Brooklyn office at noon on Monday, August 29 to protest their support of Spectra Energy’s AIM Pipeline, a -brooklyn-demanding-national-grid-stop-support-spectra-energys-dangerous-aim-pipelinehigh-pressure methane gas pipeline that will bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England. Members of 350Brooklyn.org, 350NYC.org, and ResistAIM came together to demand that National Grid end their contract agreement with Spectra Energy. The pipeline’s route runs 105 feet from infrastructure critical to the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in New York’s Westchester County. “National Grid is risking the safety of the 17 million people who live within 50 miles of the aging Indian Point reactor so it can sell gas in other parts of the country and the world,” says Mimi Bluestone of 350Brooklyn, one of eight people arrested as part of the day’s action. “Our governor and our US senators have called on the federal government to withdraw its authorization for this pipeline. But without National Grid’s end-of-pipeline agreement to buy this gas, the project could not be economically viable.” ...

Featured image: Break Free protesters at a fracking site in Colorado on May 14. (Photo: Christian O’Rourke/Survival Media Agency) By Steve Horn and Lee Fang / The Intercept When more than 300 protesters assembled in May at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood, Colorado — the venue chosen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for an auction of oil and gas leases on public lands — several of the demonstrators were in fact undercover agents sent by law enforcement to keep tabs on the demonstration, according to emails obtained by The Intercept. ...