Oil

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams Featured Image: Alali Efanga & Chief Fidelis Oguru from Oruma, two plaintiffs in the Dutch court case against Shell. (Photo: Milieudefensie/flickr) In a potentially precedent-setting ruling, a Dutch court said Friday that Royal Dutch Shell may be held liable for oil spills at its subsidiary in Nigeria—a win for farmers and environmentalists attempting to hold the oil giant accountable for leaks, spills, and widespread pollution. The ruling by the Court of Appeals in the Hague, which overturns a 2013 decision in favor of Shell, allows four Nigerian farmers to jointly sue the fossil fuels corporation in the Netherlands for causing extensive oil spills in Nigeria. ...

photo source by Clay Cochran / Deep Green Resistance “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.” -Robert Frost President Obama announced Friday morning that he has denied TransCanada’s permit application to build the Keystone XL (KXL) oil pipeline in the U.S. Many in the mainstream environmental movement hailed this as a positive seismic shift in public policy and public perception, and a harbinger of the inevitable saving of our planet. Were it only that simple. Unfortunately, although the denial of the KXL build is in itself a good result, it carries with it some insidious dangers to the continuation of the fundamental work of saving this planet. ...

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 Fionuala Cregan / Intercontinental Cry On August 19, members of the People’s Guarani Assembly of Takova Mora blocked a main highway in the Chaco region of Bolivia demanding their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding oil extraction on their communal lands. The Government responded by sending in 300 police who broke up the demonstration by force. Police repression of the blockade in Takovo Mora. (Photo OIEDC) ...

By Thomas Linzey / CELDF Four years ago, as we were leaving Spokane to help rural Pennsylvania communities stop frack injection wells and gas pipelines, this region’s environmental groups couldn’t stop talking about “stopping the coal trains.” After people in British Columbia - including NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen - were arrested for blocking oil trains; and after people in Columbia County, Oregon have now proposed a countywide ban on new fossil fuel trains, one would think that both the Spokane City Council and the region’s environmental groups would have begun to take strong steps here to, well, actually stop the coal trains. ...

By teleSUR Indigenous communities in Peru occupied 14 oil wells, paralyzing South American energy firm Pluspetrol’s production, in a protest to demand better compensation for the use of their land. Some 380 members of the Achuar community took control of the facilities in Peru’s northern Amazon region of Loreto Monday, halting the production of some 3,100 barrels of crude oil. Pluspetrol said in a statement that the protesters also seized eight boats on the Tigre River, including two that provided supplies for the company. ...

By Mongabay Indigenous leaders are calling for the release of six tribesmen implicated in a raid on an oilfield in Eastern Ecuador that left six soldiers injured, reports Andina and El Comercio. According to Ecuador’s defense ministry, on January 6th a group of Waorani (Huaorani) tribesmen armed with spears, bows and arrows, blowguns, and firearms seized a facility run by Petrobell in Arajuno canton, in Pastaza province. The action shut down production at the oilfield, which normally produces 3,200 barrels a day. ...

By Agence France-Presse The license comes just days after a petition for a referendum on the project was rejected by the country’s election authorities. The action, signed by Environment Minister Lorena Tapia, gives a state company, Petroamazonas, rights to develop an oil field in part of the forest designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Home to two indigenous tribes that have resisted contact with the outside world, the rainforest park covers an expanse of more than 9,800 square kilometers [3784 square miles] between two rivers. ...

By Dan Collyns / The Guardian Around 500 Achuar indigenous protesters have occupied Peru’s biggest oil field in the Amazon rainforest near Ecuador to demand the clean-up of decades of contamination from spilled crude oil. The oilfield operator, Argentine Pluspetrol, said output had fallen by 70% since the protesters occupied its facilities on Monday – a production drop of around 11,000 barrels per day. Native communities have taken control of a thermoelectric plant, oil tanks and key roads in the Amazonian region of Loreto, where Pluspetrol operates block 1-AB, the company said on Thursday. ...

By Andrew Wight & Taran Volckhausen / Colombia Reports Colombia’s second largest rebel group the ELN detonated explosives Wednesday at four crude oil holding pools along the Caño Limon – Coveñas pipeline in the state of North Santander. A large blaze caused by the attacks created panic in the local population, who were forced to flee their homes, according to local media reports. Authorities were taking measures to prevent further environmental damage after the attacks as well as reconstruct the damaged holding pools. ...