Oil

By EcoWatch To borrow a popular hockey term, Canada has scored a hat trick of the worst kind: Three major oil spills in just over one month. The culprit this time around is Enbridge, the Calgary, Alberta-based operator of the world’s longest crude oil and liquids pipeline system, situated in Canada and the U.S. On June 19 the company confirmed that about 1,450 barrels (230,000 litres) of crude oil spilled from a pumping station onto farmland near Elk Point, Alberta, according to The Globe and Mail. Fortunately, this spill managed to occur in an area devoid of waterways. ...

By Agence France-Presse The US government offered up new areas of the central Gulf of Mexico for drilling for the first time since the 2010 BP oil spill and received $1.7 billion in winning bids, officials said Wednesday. Environmental groups tried to block the long-awaited sale by filing a lawsuit Tuesday arguing that it will endanger the already damaged ecosystem. “The government is gambling with the Gulf by encouraging even more offshore drilling in the same exceedingly deep waters that have already proven to be treacherous, rather than investing in safer clean energy that creates jobs without risking lives and livelihoods,” said Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for North America at Oceana, one of five groups filing suit. ...

By Amazon Defense Coalition A new financial analysis has found that Chevron’s $18 billion Ecuador environmental liability poses a threat of “irreparable damage” to the oil major’s global operations if the plaintiffs make good on their promise to launch legal actions to enforce the judgment in countries where Chevron has billions of dollars in assets. The report, by social investment analyst Simon Billenness, notes that the long-running case ( Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco) “is reaching its most risky phase” for Chevron after an appeals court in Ecuador upheld the judgment in January and rendered it immediately enforceable. The report notes that Chevron’s defenses have been “severely compromised” because of a separate ruling by a New York federal appellate court that vacated a preliminary injunction purporting to bar worldwide enforcement of the judgment. ...

By Terry Macalister and Lionel Badal / The Guardian The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been warned by its internal research team that there could be a permanent doubling of oil prices in the coming decade with profound implications for global trade. “This is uncharted territory for the world economy, which has never experienced such prices for more than a few months,” the report warns. The new IMF “working paper” come as the value of crude on world markets remains at the historically high level of $113 a barrel and just after the International Energy Agency reported that consumption would accelerate for the rest of this year in line with a wider economic recovery. ...

By Fawzia Sheikh / Inter Press Service An indigenous group in the Amazon rain forest took its anti-oil message to Canada in a case rife with accusations of social and environmental damage that highlights the issue of securing consent prior to commencing exploration operations. Peas Peas Ayui, president of the National Achuar Federation of Peru (FENAP), told IPS through an interpreter that Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. is operating within its ancestral territory, covering one million hectares, without first seeking approval. The Achuar people live on both sides of the Peru- Ecuador border in the rain forest. ...

By Amazon Watch Grassroots opposition is mounting as ConocoPhillips’ plans to drill for oil within the fresh-water source for Peru’s largest rainforest city, Amazon Watch said today on the occasion of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Houston, Texas. Conoco is currently advancing plans to drill exploratory oil wells in Blocks 129 and 123, found within one of the most ecologically sensitive regions in the world. According to a May 2012 map produced by PROCREL, the Loreto regional environmental authority, ConocoPhillips is planning a total of 16 oil platforms and 48 wells between Block 129 and the adjacent Block 123. Thirteen of these platforms are found within the Upper Nanay-Pintuyacu-Chambira Regional Conservation Area. ...

By Environment News Service A federal government proposal requiring oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing only after the completion of fracking operations is running into opposition from environmental groups. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves the high pressure injection of chemicals, sand and water into shale rock thousands of feet deep, fracturing it to release hydrocarbons trapped in tight spaces. The Bureau of Land Management Friday issued a proposed rule that would, for the first time, require companies to publicly disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations on 700 million subsurface acres of federal public lands and and 56 million subsurface acres Indian lands - but not before the chemicals are pumped deep underground. ...

By Rupert Neate / The Guardian BP is planning to start three new oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico this year. The launch of the new rigs will bring the number of BP rigs in the Gulf to eight – more than the oil giant had before the devastating Deepwater Horizon disaster three years ago. Bernard Looney, BP’s executive in charge of new wells, said BP is expecting to spend $4bn (£2.5bn) on new developments in the Gulf of Mexico this year and hopes to “invest at least that much every year over the next decade”. ...

By David Hill / Mongabay The company hoping to exploit the oil deposits slated to transform Peru’s economy has been declared to be endangering the lives of indigenous people living in “voluntary isolation” by the country’s indigenous affairs department (INDEPA). Perenco, an Anglo-French company with headquarters in London and Paris, is currently seeking approval from Peru’s Energy Ministry (MEM) to develop its operations in the Loreto region in the north of the country. ...

By Dawn Paley / The Dominion The hard fought battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was slated to carry tar sands crude across Canada and the United States to port in Texas, kicked struggles against Canadian-owned oil and gas companies up to a new level. Resistance dominated headlines in Canada, while rural folk, Indigenous people, celebrities, and climate activists in the US took direct action to block Calgary-based TransCanada’s plans. In northern BC, Indigenous-led resistance to the proposed Enbridge pipeline, along with a host of other US-owned infrastructure projects, have become front and centre issues for environmentalists and activists across Canada. ...