From: http://www.ecologycenter.org/erc/petroleum/world.html
(with map and other points)
No corner of the world is left untouched by the effects of petroleum
extraction and use. Many negative effects are well documented, such as
global warming, habitat destruction, and political conflicts over oil
supplies. But the petroleum economy extends its often hidden reach into
many other aspects of life on our planet. Petroleum, used for
transportation, industry, and mechanized agriculture, is the backbone of
globalization. Institutions of global trade, such as the World Trade
Organization (WTO), work hand in hand with oil companies, while
militaries provide the armed backup to protect these interests. Examine
this map to find the connections between worldwide militarization,
environmental racism, and displacement of indigenous peoples, as well as
the toxic consequences of extraction, use, and disposal of
petrochemicals and plastics.
1. Alaska — The infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill contaminated over
700 miles of coastline and devastated the ecosystems in its wake. The
Valdez spill may have faded from the public’s memory, but the fact
remains that some wildlife populations are still not recovering. Since
the 1970s, the extraction of crude oil from Alaska's North Slope has
resulted in a host of environmental problems, including an average of at
least one oil spill per day, the release of approximately 24,000 tons of
methane gas (which contributes to global warming), noise from seismic
exploration that has displaced migrations of bowhead whales, and mining
and road building that disrupts river flows, negatively impacting fish
and wildlife. Like indigenous people all over the world, the Gwich'in
have resisted these disruptions of the natural systems on which they
depend. In addition to enduring the effects of existing operations, the
North Slope faces the constant threat of future expansion, including
attempts to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
Source: Alaska Wilderness League, www.alaskawild.org.
2. Washington, D.C. — The effects of the petroleum industry on U.S.
politics are hard to miss. President Bush II founded his own oil company
in the 1970s, and he and his family have connections with numerous Texas
oil ventures. These connections pay off in politics. In the 2000
election, Bush received major financial contributions from energy
companies and from the auto sector. Bush’s cabinet contains a record
number of “oil people.” Vice President Cheney left Bush Sr.’s
administration for Dallas, Texas to head up the world's biggest
oil-services company, Halliburton. Since 1992, Halliburton has
contributed US$1.6 billion to the campaigns of Washington-bound
politicians. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice spent a decade
on the Board of oil giant Chevron Corporation, a service that earned her
the honor of having one of its supertankers named "Condoleezza."
Meanwhile, Gail Norton, secretary of the interior, replaced office
pictures of national parks with a photo of an oil derrick off the U.S.
coast. Source: Project Underground.
3. Cancer Alley — "Cancer Alley" is the 80-mile toxic stretch along the
Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where over 100
oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industries pollute the
air, ground, and water. PVC-plastic production, vinyl manufacturing, and
agricultural petrochemical processing are aspects of the world-wide
petroleum industry that are often overlooked. As with the oil extraction
and shipping industries, it is communities of color and low-income
communities that bear the brunt of toxic pollution. One study documented
that 80 percent of residents of Cancer Alley have respiratory problems.
But residents — often led by elder women — are organizing to resist
environmental racism. From the small grassroots groups filing lawsuits
against polluters, to university study programs, to the first ever
statewide government agency to deal with environmental justice issues,
people are demanding that the petrochemical industry be held accountable
to the communities it poisons. Source: Chatham College, Women’s
Environmental Leadership and Legacy.
4. Mexico — When NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) went into
effect in 1994, environmental, safety, and labor regulations became
subject to challenge when they interfere with "free trade." The
agreement provided for the opening of the US-Mexico border to
cross-border trucking, but the U.S.'s diesel-discharge standards could
not be applied to Mexican trucking firms. The US delayed opening its
borders, and a NAFTA dispute between Mexico and the US persisted until
President Bush signed an executive order allowing international trucking
to begin without regard for environmental standards. Source:
www.worldtradelaw.net, www.latimes.com.
5. Ecuador — In Ecuador, as in many countries, resource extraction is
promoted by international lenders as a solution to foreign debt. Ecuador
covers 80% of their payments on foreign debts with oil revenues. To keep
up these revenues, the government is pushing into new oil frontiers on
indigenous lands, creating devastated ecosystems and suffering
communities. Oil companies exploit resources tax-free, extracting oil
and profits for foreign investors, leaving Ecuador with the pollution.
Between 1971 and 1991, Texaco extracted more than 1.5 billion barrels of
oil from the Ecuadoran Amazon. In order to save millions of dollars,
Texaco simply dumped the toxic wastes from its operations into the
pristine rivers, forest streams and wetlands, ignoring industry
standards. Texaco's oil operations devastated one of the most
biologically fragile places on earth; 2.5 million acres of rainforest
were lost. Now local Ecuadoran activists have joined with people
affected by Chevron-Texaco’s operations in Nigeria and in Richmond, CA,
in an international campaign and lawsuit demanding that the company
clean up and pay up. Source: Amazon Watch, Project Underground.
6. Colombia — Colombia has been torn for decades by wars that often
intertwine with corporate quests for oil. Here’s one example: In 1996,
British Petroleum (BP) paid $US60 million to Colombia's Ministry of
Defense. In return, the army agreed to supply soldiers to monitor
construction of an oil pipeline that would speed up the transfer of
crude oil (and vast profits) to the coast. BP provided training for
soldiers through a private British “security” firm called Defense
Systems Limited. According to a report commissioned by the Colombian
government, BP also collaborated with local soldiers in kidnappings,
torture, and murder. BP compiled photos and videotapes of local people
protesting oil activities, to pass on to the Colombian military, which
then arrested or kidnapped demonstrators. The U.S. government’s “War on
Drugs” has also facilitated oil exploration and extraction in Colombia.
The aerial spraying of vast areas with highly toxic chemical defoliants,
themselves products of the petrochemical industry, clears out cocaine
crops, but also opens up large areas for petroleum exploration. People
are resisting this destruction. The indigenous U’wa people recently
succeeded in a 10-year-long, non-violent struggle to protect their land
from multinational giant Shell Oil. Source: Project Underground.
7. Antarctica — Numerous scientific studies have shown that accelerated
global climate change — a result of burning carbon fuels like petroleum
and of industrial discharges associated with petroleum extraction and
refining—has already begun to occur. One result of this trend is the
melting and breaking up of polar ice caps. This, in turn, leads to a
rise in sea level, which could flood cities and ecosystems in coastal
areas. Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) call this trend “an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive
experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global
nuclear war." A long-term solution to the climate change problem will
require a global transition away from fossil fuels. Sources: Greenpeace,
Rainforest Action Network.
8. Spain — On November 19, 2002, the oil tanker Prestige broke in two
and sank off the Spanish coast. The vessel was carrying 77,000 tons of
fuel oil. Ecologists fear that the 26-year-old Prestige is an
environmental time bomb resting 130 miles off the Spanish coast and two
miles below the surface. Not only does the disaster threaten wildlife
and public health, it also devastates local fisherpeople. It’s unlikely
that the oil companies will take responsibility. "The oil industry
spares no opportunity to hide behind a legal structure so complex that
liability for their actions is almost impossible to enforce," says Ian
Wilmore of Friends of the Earth. Source: Earthjustice, Project Underground.
9. Nigeria — Since the 1960s, drilling in the Niger Delta has caused
hundreds of oil spills annually, as well as massive flaring from the
extraction operations. Meanwhile, thousands of Ogoni and other
indigenous peoples of the Niger delta have been massacred by the
Nigerian army and police after speaking out against the destruction
caused by the oil extraction. Oil companies like Shell and ChevronTexaco
are closely entwined with the brutal government regime. Companies pay
the government for drilling rights, while supplying the army with
weapons, training and forces. Still, resistance is strong. In 2002,
thousands of women from Itsekiri, Ilaje and Ijaw communities came
together to demand environmental and economic justice. They occupied
ChevronTexaco’s facilities and demanded an end to pollution, economic
reparations for damages, support for local economic development, and
jobs for their sons. The women met with violent repression, but
succeeded in stalling ChevronTexaco’s operations, leading to
negotiations and concessions by the company. Source: Project Underground.
10. The Agricultural Heartland — From petroleum-derived fertilizers,
pesticides, and plastic packaging to transportation and refrigeration,
our food system depends on massive consumption of fossil fuels, mainly
oil. About 17 percent of all energy used in this country each year goes
into growing, processing and delivering food. To meet the basic food
needs of the eleven billion people who are expected to be alive in 2040,
we'll need to triple the global food supply. Doing so with today's
conventional methods, experts estimate, would require a 1,000-percent
increase in the total energy expended in food production. Even if we
could tolerate the global warming and pollution that would produce, it
simply can't happen — there's nowhere near enough oil in the world to
make it possible. Sustainable agricultural methods, including local and
organic production, along with diet changes away from resource
intensive, meat-heavy foods, offer the only real solution.
11. Afghanistan — To the north of Afghanistan, on the eastern shores of
the Caspian Sea, lie some of the richest natural gas and oil fields in
the world. Since 1996, a consortium led by Unocal had been negotiating
with the Taliban government to build a natural gas pipeline through the
country, but were unable to broker a deal. Conveniently enough for US
oil companies, the US attacks on Afghanistan in 2002 led to a change in
leadership. Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal
consultant, has since lobbied for what he called the "pipeline for
peace." Source: EurasiaNet.org, HiPakistan.com.
12. Saudi Arabia — As the country with the largest oil reserves in the
world, Saudi Arabia’s internal struggle reflects the conflicting
pressures of the oil economy. Because the oil industry requires enormous
initial investments of capital, and because petroleum extraction is too
expensive to be profitable if land and labor are fairly paid for, oil
economies like Saudi Arabia’s tend to be built on vast inequalities. As
local elites join forces with multi-national corporations and foreign
governments, “cultural imperialism” tends to replace traditional ways of
life with those modeled on a consumeristic, westernized lifestyle. In an
attempt to maintain power, the Saudi establishment, caught between U.S.
pressure and a rebellious population, has been pulling its investments
out of the U.S. and wavering in its acceptance of war in Iraq. Source:
Project Underground.
13. Iraq — This nation of 24 million people rests on the world’s
second-largest oil reserves. Whoever controls access to Iraq’s reserves
not only gains huge profits, but holds key leveraging power in world
politics. The current war on Iraq, considered by many as a struggle to
control those vast oil reserves, will cost U.S. taxpayers a minimum of
$75 billion for the undefined length of the war, and will be followed by
a “U.S. military presence” for ten to twenty years, according to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As Iraq's entire civilian infrastructure is
restructured, Iraqi oil — which was once regulated by the Iraqi
government — will be opened to foreign multinational ownership. U.S.
government and corporate leaders are already drawing up plans for
profiting on the rebuilding of Iraq, including contracting out
rebuilding operations to "logistical" multinationals, like Halliburton,
the world’s largest oil and gas services corporation, formerly run by
Vice President Dick Cheney. Source: Project Underground.
Sources / Resources
Project Underground, www.moles.org
International Forum on Globalization, www.ifg.org
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, www.no-burn.org
International Plastics Task Force, www.ecologycenter.org/iptf/
Food First, www.foodfirst.org
Greenpeace, www.greenpeace.org
Amazon Watch, www.amazonwatch.org
Rainforest Action Network, www.ran.org
Environmentalists Against War, www.envirosagainstwar.org
(with map and other points)
No corner of the world is left untouched by the effects of petroleum
extraction and use. Many negative effects are well documented, such as
global warming, habitat destruction, and political conflicts over oil
supplies. But the petroleum economy extends its often hidden reach into
many other aspects of life on our planet. Petroleum, used for
transportation, industry, and mechanized agriculture, is the backbone of
globalization. Institutions of global trade, such as the World Trade
Organization (WTO), work hand in hand with oil companies, while
militaries provide the armed backup to protect these interests. Examine
this map to find the connections between worldwide militarization,
environmental racism, and displacement of indigenous peoples, as well as
the toxic consequences of extraction, use, and disposal of
petrochemicals and plastics.
1. Alaska — The infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill contaminated over
700 miles of coastline and devastated the ecosystems in its wake. The
Valdez spill may have faded from the public’s memory, but the fact
remains that some wildlife populations are still not recovering. Since
the 1970s, the extraction of crude oil from Alaska's North Slope has
resulted in a host of environmental problems, including an average of at
least one oil spill per day, the release of approximately 24,000 tons of
methane gas (which contributes to global warming), noise from seismic
exploration that has displaced migrations of bowhead whales, and mining
and road building that disrupts river flows, negatively impacting fish
and wildlife. Like indigenous people all over the world, the Gwich'in
have resisted these disruptions of the natural systems on which they
depend. In addition to enduring the effects of existing operations, the
North Slope faces the constant threat of future expansion, including
attempts to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
Source: Alaska Wilderness League, www.alaskawild.org.
2. Washington, D.C. — The effects of the petroleum industry on U.S.
politics are hard to miss. President Bush II founded his own oil company
in the 1970s, and he and his family have connections with numerous Texas
oil ventures. These connections pay off in politics. In the 2000
election, Bush received major financial contributions from energy
companies and from the auto sector. Bush’s cabinet contains a record
number of “oil people.” Vice President Cheney left Bush Sr.’s
administration for Dallas, Texas to head up the world's biggest
oil-services company, Halliburton. Since 1992, Halliburton has
contributed US$1.6 billion to the campaigns of Washington-bound
politicians. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice spent a decade
on the Board of oil giant Chevron Corporation, a service that earned her
the honor of having one of its supertankers named "Condoleezza."
Meanwhile, Gail Norton, secretary of the interior, replaced office
pictures of national parks with a photo of an oil derrick off the U.S.
coast. Source: Project Underground.
3. Cancer Alley — "Cancer Alley" is the 80-mile toxic stretch along the
Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where over 100
oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industries pollute the
air, ground, and water. PVC-plastic production, vinyl manufacturing, and
agricultural petrochemical processing are aspects of the world-wide
petroleum industry that are often overlooked. As with the oil extraction
and shipping industries, it is communities of color and low-income
communities that bear the brunt of toxic pollution. One study documented
that 80 percent of residents of Cancer Alley have respiratory problems.
But residents — often led by elder women — are organizing to resist
environmental racism. From the small grassroots groups filing lawsuits
against polluters, to university study programs, to the first ever
statewide government agency to deal with environmental justice issues,
people are demanding that the petrochemical industry be held accountable
to the communities it poisons. Source: Chatham College, Women’s
Environmental Leadership and Legacy.
4. Mexico — When NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) went into
effect in 1994, environmental, safety, and labor regulations became
subject to challenge when they interfere with "free trade." The
agreement provided for the opening of the US-Mexico border to
cross-border trucking, but the U.S.'s diesel-discharge standards could
not be applied to Mexican trucking firms. The US delayed opening its
borders, and a NAFTA dispute between Mexico and the US persisted until
President Bush signed an executive order allowing international trucking
to begin without regard for environmental standards. Source:
www.worldtradelaw.net, www.latimes.com.
5. Ecuador — In Ecuador, as in many countries, resource extraction is
promoted by international lenders as a solution to foreign debt. Ecuador
covers 80% of their payments on foreign debts with oil revenues. To keep
up these revenues, the government is pushing into new oil frontiers on
indigenous lands, creating devastated ecosystems and suffering
communities. Oil companies exploit resources tax-free, extracting oil
and profits for foreign investors, leaving Ecuador with the pollution.
Between 1971 and 1991, Texaco extracted more than 1.5 billion barrels of
oil from the Ecuadoran Amazon. In order to save millions of dollars,
Texaco simply dumped the toxic wastes from its operations into the
pristine rivers, forest streams and wetlands, ignoring industry
standards. Texaco's oil operations devastated one of the most
biologically fragile places on earth; 2.5 million acres of rainforest
were lost. Now local Ecuadoran activists have joined with people
affected by Chevron-Texaco’s operations in Nigeria and in Richmond, CA,
in an international campaign and lawsuit demanding that the company
clean up and pay up. Source: Amazon Watch, Project Underground.
6. Colombia — Colombia has been torn for decades by wars that often
intertwine with corporate quests for oil. Here’s one example: In 1996,
British Petroleum (BP) paid $US60 million to Colombia's Ministry of
Defense. In return, the army agreed to supply soldiers to monitor
construction of an oil pipeline that would speed up the transfer of
crude oil (and vast profits) to the coast. BP provided training for
soldiers through a private British “security” firm called Defense
Systems Limited. According to a report commissioned by the Colombian
government, BP also collaborated with local soldiers in kidnappings,
torture, and murder. BP compiled photos and videotapes of local people
protesting oil activities, to pass on to the Colombian military, which
then arrested or kidnapped demonstrators. The U.S. government’s “War on
Drugs” has also facilitated oil exploration and extraction in Colombia.
The aerial spraying of vast areas with highly toxic chemical defoliants,
themselves products of the petrochemical industry, clears out cocaine
crops, but also opens up large areas for petroleum exploration. People
are resisting this destruction. The indigenous U’wa people recently
succeeded in a 10-year-long, non-violent struggle to protect their land
from multinational giant Shell Oil. Source: Project Underground.
7. Antarctica — Numerous scientific studies have shown that accelerated
global climate change — a result of burning carbon fuels like petroleum
and of industrial discharges associated with petroleum extraction and
refining—has already begun to occur. One result of this trend is the
melting and breaking up of polar ice caps. This, in turn, leads to a
rise in sea level, which could flood cities and ecosystems in coastal
areas. Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) call this trend “an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive
experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global
nuclear war." A long-term solution to the climate change problem will
require a global transition away from fossil fuels. Sources: Greenpeace,
Rainforest Action Network.
8. Spain — On November 19, 2002, the oil tanker Prestige broke in two
and sank off the Spanish coast. The vessel was carrying 77,000 tons of
fuel oil. Ecologists fear that the 26-year-old Prestige is an
environmental time bomb resting 130 miles off the Spanish coast and two
miles below the surface. Not only does the disaster threaten wildlife
and public health, it also devastates local fisherpeople. It’s unlikely
that the oil companies will take responsibility. "The oil industry
spares no opportunity to hide behind a legal structure so complex that
liability for their actions is almost impossible to enforce," says Ian
Wilmore of Friends of the Earth. Source: Earthjustice, Project Underground.
9. Nigeria — Since the 1960s, drilling in the Niger Delta has caused
hundreds of oil spills annually, as well as massive flaring from the
extraction operations. Meanwhile, thousands of Ogoni and other
indigenous peoples of the Niger delta have been massacred by the
Nigerian army and police after speaking out against the destruction
caused by the oil extraction. Oil companies like Shell and ChevronTexaco
are closely entwined with the brutal government regime. Companies pay
the government for drilling rights, while supplying the army with
weapons, training and forces. Still, resistance is strong. In 2002,
thousands of women from Itsekiri, Ilaje and Ijaw communities came
together to demand environmental and economic justice. They occupied
ChevronTexaco’s facilities and demanded an end to pollution, economic
reparations for damages, support for local economic development, and
jobs for their sons. The women met with violent repression, but
succeeded in stalling ChevronTexaco’s operations, leading to
negotiations and concessions by the company. Source: Project Underground.
10. The Agricultural Heartland — From petroleum-derived fertilizers,
pesticides, and plastic packaging to transportation and refrigeration,
our food system depends on massive consumption of fossil fuels, mainly
oil. About 17 percent of all energy used in this country each year goes
into growing, processing and delivering food. To meet the basic food
needs of the eleven billion people who are expected to be alive in 2040,
we'll need to triple the global food supply. Doing so with today's
conventional methods, experts estimate, would require a 1,000-percent
increase in the total energy expended in food production. Even if we
could tolerate the global warming and pollution that would produce, it
simply can't happen — there's nowhere near enough oil in the world to
make it possible. Sustainable agricultural methods, including local and
organic production, along with diet changes away from resource
intensive, meat-heavy foods, offer the only real solution.
11. Afghanistan — To the north of Afghanistan, on the eastern shores of
the Caspian Sea, lie some of the richest natural gas and oil fields in
the world. Since 1996, a consortium led by Unocal had been negotiating
with the Taliban government to build a natural gas pipeline through the
country, but were unable to broker a deal. Conveniently enough for US
oil companies, the US attacks on Afghanistan in 2002 led to a change in
leadership. Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal
consultant, has since lobbied for what he called the "pipeline for
peace." Source: EurasiaNet.org, HiPakistan.com.
12. Saudi Arabia — As the country with the largest oil reserves in the
world, Saudi Arabia’s internal struggle reflects the conflicting
pressures of the oil economy. Because the oil industry requires enormous
initial investments of capital, and because petroleum extraction is too
expensive to be profitable if land and labor are fairly paid for, oil
economies like Saudi Arabia’s tend to be built on vast inequalities. As
local elites join forces with multi-national corporations and foreign
governments, “cultural imperialism” tends to replace traditional ways of
life with those modeled on a consumeristic, westernized lifestyle. In an
attempt to maintain power, the Saudi establishment, caught between U.S.
pressure and a rebellious population, has been pulling its investments
out of the U.S. and wavering in its acceptance of war in Iraq. Source:
Project Underground.
13. Iraq — This nation of 24 million people rests on the world’s
second-largest oil reserves. Whoever controls access to Iraq’s reserves
not only gains huge profits, but holds key leveraging power in world
politics. The current war on Iraq, considered by many as a struggle to
control those vast oil reserves, will cost U.S. taxpayers a minimum of
$75 billion for the undefined length of the war, and will be followed by
a “U.S. military presence” for ten to twenty years, according to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As Iraq's entire civilian infrastructure is
restructured, Iraqi oil — which was once regulated by the Iraqi
government — will be opened to foreign multinational ownership. U.S.
government and corporate leaders are already drawing up plans for
profiting on the rebuilding of Iraq, including contracting out
rebuilding operations to "logistical" multinationals, like Halliburton,
the world’s largest oil and gas services corporation, formerly run by
Vice President Dick Cheney. Source: Project Underground.
Sources / Resources
Project Underground, www.moles.org
International Forum on Globalization, www.ifg.org
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, www.no-burn.org
International Plastics Task Force, www.ecologycenter.org/iptf/
Food First, www.foodfirst.org
Greenpeace, www.greenpeace.org
Amazon Watch, www.amazonwatch.org
Rainforest Action Network, www.ran.org
Environmentalists Against War, www.envirosagainstwar.org
