Natural-Gas

by ResistAIM Early October 10, four water protectors crawled inside lengths of pipeline along the Hudson River to stop Spectra Energy from dragging its 42-inch diameter, high pressure, fracked-methane gas pipeline under the Hudson River alongside the aging and failing Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. Spectra Energy’s proposed AIM Pipeline would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England, despite a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General that shows no need for this gas. ...

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.” ...

DGR Lower Columbia members report on publicy supporting underground resistance at a coal export terminal EIS hearing. DGR Seattle needs signatures on an open letter demanding that BNSF Railway stop transporting fossil fuels. A new DGR chapter has been started, in Santa Barbara. A member of DGR UK wrote a summary of land defence struggles in the British countryside.

By ResistAIM On Friday, July 29th, a coalition of 21 plaintiffs including local groups Riverkeeper, Sierra Club Lower Hudson, Food & Water Watch NY, Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE), and Reynolds Hill, Inc. filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) March 2015 approval of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Markets (AIM) pipeline project.Although many state and local officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, both New York Senators and Representatives Nita Lowey and Eliot Engle have come out against the pipeline, so far construction is still moving forward. ...

Nine community members arrested for blocking construction on Spectra Energy’s AIM pipeline expansion - known as the “Montrose 9" - join the national debate over harms caused by fossil fuel infrastructure By ResistAIM Cortlandt, NY — The “Montrose 9” are nine community members arrested for disorderly conduct for allegedly blocking traffic near the access to a Spectra Energy construction yard used for the expansion of a high-pressure fracked-gas pipeline known as the AIM pipeline. Their trial has the potential to become a landmark case with national implications involving the “necessity defense.” Defense counsel Martin R. Stolar is a prominent social justice attorney who argues that the defendants’ actions were justified since they were undertaken to stop a greater harm and were carried out only after all other legal and regulatory options had been exhausted. Court adjourned until July 15th at 1pm, when the other seven defendants are expected to testify regarding their reasons for taking direct action against the project. ...

CASE ON INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS AND EXTRACTIVE PROJECTS MOVES FORWARD AT INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS by EarthRights International / Intercontinental Cry Washington, DC – The U’wa Nation has received an admissibility report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights allowing its case against Colombia to move forward, recognizing that the indigenous group can seek the Commission’s help in defending its traditional territory. Although the U’wa have successfully defeated multiple oil and gas projects in the nearly two decades since they first filed their complaint with the Commission, the report recognizes that winning these battles does not end the overall complaint with the Colombian government, which does not fully recognize the U’wa people’s rights to their territory. ...

By Luutkudziiwus / Intercontinental Cry VANCOUVER - Luutkudziiwus, a Gitxsan Nation House Group, will file a legal challenge in regard to the BC regulatory permits awarded to the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline that would supply gas to the Petronas LNG plant on Lelu Island which threatens to decimate Skeena River wild salmon. Luutkudziiwus Hereditary Chiefs travelled down to Vancouver to make the announcement today, while government and industry are gathered at the 2015 LNG Conference in BC. ...

By Natalie Bochenski / Sydney Morning Herald An anti-fracking activist group will “poison” a major work at the Gallery of Modern Art to protest its sponsorship by Santos. Generation Alpha said Heritage, which features 99 animals gathered around a blue water pond, showed exactly the kind of environment that the natural resources company would ruin. Spokesman Ben Pennings said it was “beyond ironic” that Santos would sponsor the Falling Back to Earth exhibit. ...

By David Hill / Mongabay The Peruvian government has approved plans for gas company Pluspetrol to move deeper into a supposedly protected reserve for indigenous peoples and the buffer zone of the Manu National Park in the Amazon rainforest. The approval follows the government rescinding a highly critical report on the potential impacts of the operations by the Culture Ministry (MINCU), the resignation of the Culture Minister and other Ministry personnel, and repeated criticism from Peruvian and international civil society. ...

By Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Earlier today, the County Commission of Mora County, located in Northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the United States to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction. Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights – including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment, and the rights of nature – while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” for shale gas. ...