This disturbing video from Al Jazeera shows what’s left of Chevron’s KS Endeavour gas rig, which exploded on 16 January 2012. Over 20 days later the site is still ablaze and the intense flames and plumes of smoke can be seen from the nearby fishing village. Local community activists released this footage:
On 16 January, between 4.30am and 5am, Chevron’s KS Endeavour drilling rig exploded six miles off the coast of Nigeria after the company lost control of the gas well. Two workers were reported killed. Ten days on, the fire continues to burn.
Photos courtesy of Morris Alagoa at ERA/FoE Nigeria. Continue reading
Shell sponsorship: there's something unsettling about the Shell branded baby blankets in this hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Nevertheless, corporate sponsorship and community projects cannot absolve oil companies like Shell for creating a health crisis and human rights tragedy in the Niger Delta.
EU oil companies including Shell and Total will be banned from importing and purchasing Iranian oil by new sanctions, reported Reuters. As Iran threatens to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery of global oil shipments, the UK foreign minister William Hague downplayed the likelihood of war.
On Monday 16 January at 4.30 to 5am, Chevron’s KS Endeavour drilling rig burst into flames, approximately 6 miles off the coast of Nigeria. Two workers are reported missing. The gas rig is still said to be burning for the second day running and is reported to have partially collapsed into the ocean. The cause is as yet unconfirmed, but early reports indicate that the explosion was partly the result of a failed blow out preventer (BOP), with parallels being drawn to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Nigerian state oil company, NNPC, speculated that Chevron’s drillers lost control of gas pressure when equipment failure led to a “gas-kick”. Continue reading
Today The Guardian reports that at least 10 people have been killed in violent clashes between police and oil workers in Zhanaozen, a small city in western Kazakhstan. Local oil workers have been protesting for higher wages and better working conditions throughout 2011. The oil and gas companies, among them KMG, (KazMunaiGaz) which is 39% owned by investors on the London stock exchange, and Ersai Caspian Contractor, a joint venture owned by Italian firm ENI, have sacked hundreds of workers for striking. Police have responded to the strikes with arbitrary arrests, detention and shootings. The Financial Times suggests the number of recent casualties could be much higher:
An independent source in Astana put the death count as high as 70, with more than 500 wounded, when police fired on protesters.
In this guest blog, journalist Peter Salmon explores the background and root causes of the strikes and the repression that has rocked the Kazakhstan throughout 2011. Continue reading
Egyptian communities concerned about a proposed BP gas plant on the Mediterranean coast have organised protests, including a sit-in on the site, road blockades and a raid on BP’s local office, as reported by Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The residents of Idku, east of Alexandria, are opposing plans to pump gas ashore from BP’s offshore drill rigs before processing it for onwards shipment. The military has already approved the project, but local campaigners are demanding that the Egyptian Environmental Agency. A 2002 report by the Agency concluded that such a project would be too damaging to the local fish, coral reefs, agricultural land and ecologically-rich area. Continue reading
The Western consortium developing the enormous Karachaganak natural gas field in Kazakhstan was fined $21 million yesterday for excessive dumping waste. British BG, Italian Eni and American Chevron, the companies developing the field on the the border with Russia, were convicted of environmental violations in 2008 by a regional court.
Analysts and reporters believe that the penalty is part of a pressure drive by the Kazakh state aiming to renegotiate or change contracts with private foreign oil companies. Kazakhstan is currently scrutinizing seventeen landmark oil deals it signed in the early 1990s when it had a much weaker negotiating position, many of which are now seen as being unfairly skewed towards the international oil companies by locking in favourable tax regimes.
While the Kazakh state has only recently begun to raise these issues, villagers from Berezovka, a small village located within a kilometre of Karachaganak’s sanitary protection zone have been fighting back for years. According to Crude Accountability, the gas field is spewing toxins into their community, causing serious environmental and health damage among the residents. To stop this damage, a committed group of villagers created the public organization Zhasil Dala (Green Steppe) to fight for compensation and relocation to a safe and environmentally clean location of their choosing.
Earlier in February, the first ever lawsuit filed by NGOs against the Kazakh government received a continuance. In 2004, the Kazakh government illegally reduced the Sanitary Zone around Karachaganak from five to three kilometres, exposing the villagers to highly toxic levels of pollutants. The 1,500 residents of Berezovka believe that as a result, they live in a zone that is dangerous to life. The case taken by the Ecological Society “Green Salvation” and local villagers accused the federal government of “failing to undertake measures to protect and defend the rights and freedoms of citizens”. Five other villages, consisting of nearly nine thousand people, are situated on the perimeter of the Karachaganak Field’s sanitary protection zone and experience significant negative health impacts.
If the new legal process ends positively and the lawsuit demands are satisfied, the villagers of Berezovka will be relocated. As a rule, the expenses in such cases are incurred by the company that is operating the field. However, according to a recent article in a Kazakh paper, the Karachaganak PSA ensures that all charges on foreign investors are compensated for by the Kazakhstani government – another reason to renegotiate!
For 11 years the people of County Mayo in Ireland have been resisting Shell’s efforts to develop a dangerous high pressure raw gas pipeline. Pat O’Donnell, a prominent local fisherman and anti-Shell campaigner defending his family and livelihood has been sentenced to 7 months in jail. Retired Maura Harrington was also convicted of charges including obstruction of the Shell site and damage to a Shell net on the cliff face at Glengad. Shell illegally placed the net there to stop sandmartins from nesting. This is yet another example of Shell’s criminalisation of members of the Rossport community, aided and abetted by the Irish state.
Pat, known locally as “The Chief”, has been central to resisting Shell’s plans on the sea. Now that he is imprisoned, Shell are moving ahead fast with their offshore plans.
The offshore Environmental Management Plan (EMP) gives details of Shell’s plans to lay concrete and rock over and around the off shore Corrib gas pipeline laid last year to fasten it in place. According to the plans, survey work would be carried out during March and April, with the massive concrete and rock placing operation lasting from May right through to September.
Ominously, the plan spells out Shell’s continued disregard for the local fishing community’s incontrovertible legal and traditional right to fish in Broadhaven Bay: “Fishing activites will be restricted in the construction corridor, during marine construction activities.”
A cursory glance at the map of the proposed route of the investigation up the estuary shows that there is no way through for a high pressure raw gas pipeline without placing homes and lives in danger. It seems that Shell has been given carte blanche for the offshore works, but the company still requires a foreshore licence to survey and drill the boreholes in the estuary.
Often it is the survey work that can be most damaging to whales, dolphins, seals and other mammals. Ultrasonic testing can damage their hearing and even cause death. This week a group of dolphins came into the bay. Instead of keeping its distance, a Shell speedboat made straight for them. Be it out of incompetence or ill-will, Shell employees cannot be trusted to obey their own environmental management plans, and Shell management cannot be trusted to enforce them.
Shell’s offshore Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for 2010 is up on the Department of Energy website.
A solidarity protest for Pat O’Donnell has been called for Saint Patrick’s day outside the Irish Embassy in London.
Local opposition is slowing Shell’s plans to drill for “tight gas” in Mora County in North-Western Arizona. Until recently, extracting “tight” or “shale gas” wasn’t economically viable, due to the smaller quantities dispersed across a wider rock deposit. However, new techniques known as “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” allow oil & gas corporations to access these deposits, leading to aggressive new exploration and drigling programmes. Fracking involves injecting a slurry of sand and chemicals at high pressure into the rock. The fracking fluid weakens and fractures the surrounding rock, making it more permeable to the surrounding gas. Concerns over toxicity, health risks and pollution of water have led to much opposition to the technique by local communities in the US.
Shell (in the shape of Houston-based and wholly-owned SWEPI) has been pushing hard to drill for gas in Mora County. However, many of the 5,000 inhabitants of Mora are highly concerned. The Mora County Declaration of The Public Welfare states that
“The connection between our land, our water and our people has sustained our culture since the first settlements in Mora County and our future depends on keeping these connections strong. Water is a vital link which, if severed from the land, will also fragment our people from their land. The allocation of our limited water resources must recognize traditional subsistence agricultural and grazing activities as a priority over other types of more profitable land uses. Water is not just a commodity to be bought and sold or exploited for short-term gains. Water is the life blood of Mora County’s traditions, culture and land use. A sustainable future for Mora County requires protection of the most valuable resource for our communities – the water!”
Local residents have formed concerned citizen’s groups including Drilling Mora County.
Statements by local residents include this:
“I have spent my whole life in Mora County. Given that, it is naturally close to my heart. I learned at an early age, that each and every drop of water is precious. When you have to haul a jug down the hill each day to get your water out of the spring, water gains a whole new meaning. There aren’t many places left where you can drink straight out of the ground and not fear becoming ill from it. If unregulated oil and gas development enters Mora County, our children and grandchildren will never have that experience.
Mora County is a quiet place with a small population of approximately 5,000 people and the dubious distinction of being the 17th poorest county in the country. Abundant clean water, healthy wildlife, and an agriculturally based community reside on the sloping hillsides and in the green rolling valleys. If our county does not implement an ordinance such as the one in Santa Fe County, this could all be replaced with polluted water supplies, the all-night hum of gas wells, sick wildlife that is not fit to eat, and a population suffering the adverse health effects that so often accompany hydraulic fracturing.
A couple of years ago, KHL landmen came asking land owners to lease their mineral rights. These leases not only sign over mineral rights, but they also sever the landowners water rights from their property, which is a direct contradiction to our declaration of the public welfare. It appears that these leases will be sold to Royal Dutch Shell who is loudly touting their “good neighbor” policy and insistently claiming that we don’t need any form of legal protection because they have their own oversight boards. From observing history, I think it’s safe to say that all forms of power with the potential to be destructive need outside oversight to guarantee people’s safety. The Federal Government does not regulate the oil and gas industry, so it is up to individual counties to protect themselves.
Industry has told us that the chemicals they use are safe, and hydraulic fracturing poses no risk, yet there are many examples of illness and water contamination caused by industry, and they are adamantly against Mora County implementing an ordinance similar to Santa Fe’s. We need to ask the questions, if hydraulic fracturing is so safe and wonderful, then why do they feel the need to rewrite our Comprehensive Land Use Plan, and why are they so against a protective ordinance? An industry representative recently suggested to our county commissioners that if we wanted an oil and gas ordinance we should adopt one such as the one in Rio Arriba county. I have not read Rio Arriba’s oil and gas drilling ordinance, but given that it was suggested by industry, I am fairly sure that it offers little to no actual protection for the county.
Our resistance of unregulated oil and gas development must be based on facts, not emotions. It is difficult to set feelings aside when one is contemplating the destruction of all they hold dear; however, success depends on clear thinking and careful consideration of all facets of the situation. It is important to remember that industry representatives are quite good at what they do and are compensated very well for their time.The oil and gas industry is not emotional, it is detached and calculating, with enough money to say whatever it wishes. The integrity of truth, and the knowledge we gain by educating ourselves is the power we have as citizens. We have the opportunity to protect Mora County before it is destroyed like Trinidad Colorado, Aztec New Mexico, Dimock Pennsylvania, Grandview Texas, Pavillion Wyoming, and so many other places in the United States.
You cannot eat money, and you cannot drink gas. This community is capable, and has a long history of, being self-sustained. Preserving that which cannot be replaced by any amount of money is an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up.
Andrey Zatoka, environmentalist and civil society leader from Turkmenistan, was sentenced to five years in prison after being framed for assault in Dashovuz, Turkmenistan, on October 29, 2009.
On October 20, 2009, Andrey Zatoka was arrested by the police in a Dashovuz bazaar, after he was attacked by an unknown man while buying groceries for his birthday. When Andrey approached the police for help, they arrested him instead of protecting him. Andrey was a well-known civil rights & environmentalist activist, raising concerns about the impacts of fossil fuel development. Here’s Amnesty’s Urgent Action for Andrey.
European governments have stayed unsurprisingly quiet. One of the pillars of EU “energy security” strategy is construction of the Nabucco pipeline, to run from Turkey to Austria. The pipeline is intended to bring natural gas from Central Asia and the Middle East directly to Europe, without relying on Russian gas or infrastructure. Moving ahead with Nabucco relies on commitments by gas producing countries that they will sell to Europe. With Azerbaijan’s mega-Shah Deniz field unable to provide enough gas to fill Nabucco itself, attention has focused on Turkmenistan’s resources. The EU has lobbied hard for gas to be pumped west, as opposed to east to China, north to Russia or south to Iran.
Much of Turkmenistan’s Caspian territory remains unexplored, with estimates for gas reserves ranging from 4 to 38 trillion cubic metres. British oil companies, including BP, have made repeated overtures to the Turkmen government in the last two years, in the hope of securing exploration licences. Developing fields under the Caspian and exporting the gas would be comparatively for BP, as its Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan lies close to the marine border with Turkmenistan and its South Caucasus Gas Pipeline already pumps gas across the Caucasus and into the Turkish grid.
The EU and British oil companies eagerness to access Turkmen fossil fuels enables the regime to continue repression. Kate Watters of Crude Accountability, who focus on impacts of oil development in the region, argued that Andrey Zatoka’s arrest indicates “that the west has traded away protection of human rights for access to hydrocarbons.”
A recent statement by those concerned citizens within Turkmenistan described the situation:
“There is absolutely no freedom of speech in the country. All news media is affiliated with and strictly controlled by the government. Any public expression of differing opinions is impossible. Repression includes interviews and publication in foreign mass media. Access to the Internet continues to be censored.
There is no pluralism in the country. There are no political parties. All political and social activity is strictly controlled by the authorities. It is impossible for NGOs to work legally. All civic activists are under constant control of the secret police, undergo psychological pressure, and are subject to physical threats made against them and their relatives.
The Constitution of Turkmenistan does not include the right to freely leave the country. As a result, citizens are frequently denied the freedom to leave the country or are pressured and manipulated when applying for the right to leave Turkmenistan. Journalists, civil society activists, and the relatives of those in prison are forbidden from leaving the country.
