http://allafrica.com/stories/201207170233.html

BY CLARA NWACHUKWU, OKEY NDIRIBE, EMMAN OVUAKPORIE AND KUNLE KALEJAYE, 17 JULY 2012

Living with oil spill in Ogoniland, Nigeria

Lagos – The Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company, SNEPCO, has been fined U.S.$5 billion over the massive oil spill that occurred at its Bonga oil field on December 20, 2011.

This was disclosed yesterday by the Director General, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, Dr. Peter Idabor, when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Environment.

The committee’s public hearing was meant to provide key actors in the Bonga oil spill an opportunity to brief the committee on the claims of affected communities.

Oil spill in the river

Idabor said the sum was an “administrative penalty” considering the large quantity of crude oil discharged into the environment by Shell and the impact of the incident on the water and aquatic life.

According to Idabor, the penalty was also consistent with what was obtainable in other oil producing countries such as Venezuela, Brazil and the United States of America.

He explained that this penalty was not the same as compensation since compensation could only be demanded from a polluting company after a proper post impact assessment has been conducted and scientific evidence of impact established.

Idabor disclosed that NOSDRA, Shell and other relevant stakeholders have concluded plans to conduct the post impact assessment on the spill as soon as approval for funding is secured from National Petroleum Investment Management Services.

Shell disagrees with fine

However, Shell has contested the fine, saying it has done nothing wrong to deserve the fine. In a quick response to Vanguard enquiries, a spokesman for Shell, Mr Tony Okonedo, said: “We do not believe there is any basis in law for such a fine. Neither do we believe that SNEPCo has committed any infraction of Nigerian law to warrant such a fine.

“SNEPCo responded to this incident with professionalism and acted with the consent of the necessary authorities at all times to prevent environmental impact as a result of the incident.”

In the heat of the controversies over the spill, especially with regard to third party spill which was cited in several other parts of the Niger Delta, Shell claimed it had sent samples of the spill to laboratories abroad for tests to confirm its liabilities. But till date, nothing was heard of the result of the tests.

Reason for fine

The NOSDRA boss explaining the reason for the $5 billion fine noted that “although adequate containment measures were put in place to combat the Bonga oil spill, it, however, posed a serious environmental threat to the offshore environment.”

He said: “The spilled 40,000 barrels impacted approximately on 950 square kilometres of water surface; affected great number of sensitive environmental resources across the impacted area and has direct social impact on the livelihood of people in the riverine areas whose primary occupation is fishing.

“It also potentially caused a number of physiological effects on aquatic lives while surviving aquatic species around the spill site would migrate to a farther distance to situate new habitat thereby forcing coastal communities to move deeper into the sea to carry out fishing activities.”

Chairman, House Committee on Environment, Hon. Uche Ekwunife had at the opening of the interactive session expressed displeasure that seven months after the spill, there were doubts if Shell carried out a thorough clean-up programme as the oil firm was said to have hurriedly resumed operations on the facility.

She further stated that there were also indications that Shell had refused to accept full responsibility for the incident and had rebuffed claims from communities affected by the spill.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/17-0

I couldn’t agree more!!! Great to see this in print. Wish all teachers could read it. DV

Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Rethinking Schools Blog

by Bill Bigelow

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve been spared most of the brutal weather experienced in the rest of the country. Throughout the United States, in the month of June alone, 3,200 daytime high temperature records were broken or tied. In Washington, D.C., an 11-day stretch of temperatures above 95 degrees is the longest since records have been kept. The weird and deadly mid-Atlantic storm—the “land hurricane”—took the lives of 23 people and left 4 million without electricity. Colorado has suffered through the worst forest fires in the state’s history. And the fire still burning in southeastern Oregon is the biggest one the state has seen in 150 years.Illustration: Erik Ruin

As climate scientists will tell you, there is no way to link any single weather event to global warming. But as Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, said recently on Democracy Now!, “What we’re seeing now is the future. We’re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we’re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires, and storms. . . . This is just the beginning.”

And yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to lead the climate change denial parade. On June 27, a day when almost 200 high temperature records were broken, Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, pooh-poohing climate change, saying that the problem was activist organizations that “manufacture fear.” Tillerson said that the problem was an “illiterate public,” which needed to be taught that all environmental risks were “entirely manageable.”

And conservative pundits proudly wave the same flat-earth flag. Arguing with E. J. Dionne on ABC’s This Week, George Will said, “You asked us—how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. . . . We’re having some hot weather. Get over it.”

In our editorial, “Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis,” in the spring 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools, we wrote that the climate crisis is “arguably the most significant threat to life on earth,” and urged educators to respond with the urgency that the crisis deserves. The events of this summer have added an exclamation point to our editorial.

A new article by Bill McKibben in the July/August 2012 issue of Orion Magazine, “A Matter of Degrees: The Arithmetic of a Warming Climate,” holds profound implications for educators. McKibben begins with the reminder that there is a global consensus that if the planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius, we enter the “guaranteed-catastrophe zone.” (And McKibben acknowledges that even 2 degrees may be too generous of a climate allowance.)

So McKibben does the arithmetic. To remain under the 2-degree threshold, we need to emit no more than 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the next 40 years. As he puts it, “It’s like saying if you want to keep your blood alcohol level legal for driving, you can’t drink more than eight beers in the next six hours.” But here is the problem. Analysts have calculated that all the claimed reserves from fossil fuel—coal, oil, and natural gas—companies add up to 2,795 gigatons, five times more than the maximum allowable, even in a scenario that itself is fraught with climate danger.

“Here’s another way of saying it: We need to leave at least 80 percent of that coal and gas and oil underground,” McKibben writes. “The problem is, extracting and burning that coal and oil and gas is already factored into the share prices of the companies involved—the value of that carbon is already counted as part of the economy.” This would be the equivalent of these companies writing off $20 trillion.

For those of us who take climate science seriously, I think that we’re left with an inescapable conclusion: It’s not enough to teach about fossil fuels, we have to teach against fossil fuels. Any curriculum discussion that fails to address the threat posed by fossil fuel consumption to humanity and the future of all life on earth is profoundly irresponsible.

To illustrate the criminal full-speed-ahead approach of the fossil fuel industry, here in the Northwest, coal companies are pushing plans to export between 150 and 170 million tons of coal a year from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana through six different Oregon and Washington ports to Asia.

Put aside for a moment the horrible toll that coal mining takes on the land and water and people in Montana and Wyoming.

Put aside the coal dust pollution that destroys lungs and kills people.

Put aside the violation of Native fishing rights along the Columbia River, where all the coal would travel by train and barge.

Put aside the noise pollution and disruption from as many as 60 mile-long, diesel exhaust-spewing trains a day.

And instead think only about the climate implications of the hundreds of millions of tons of coal that will be burned if these export routes are opened—a yearly figure, by my calculations, of between 240 and 270 million tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of 65 coal-fired power plants. (Of course, anti-coal export activists are busy making sure this doesn’t come to pass.)

Educators need to do our part. We have to continue to create—and teach—curriculum that through role play, simulation, experiment, projects, art, story, media, and activism helps students explore the causes and consequences of climate change—and imagine economic arrangements that can stop hurtling us toward the “catastrophe zone.” This work is already under way.

See articles in our special issue on “Teaching for Environmental Justice:”
“‘Don’t Take Our Voices Away’: A Role Play on the Indigenous People’s Summit on Climate Change”
“Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline”
“Got Coal? Teaching About the Most Dangerous Rock in America”
And in the latest issue of Rethinking Schools, “Fracking: In the End, We’re All Downstream.”

We concluded our climate crisis editorial: “The fight for a climate-relevant education is part of the broader fight for a critical, humane, challenging, and socially responsive curriculum. It’s work that belongs to us all.”

It’s also work that has never been more urgent.
© 2012 Rethinking Schools
Bill Bigelow

Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and author or co-editor of several Rethinking Schools books: A People’s History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, and Rethinking Our Classrooms–Volumes 1 and 2. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, and has taught high school social studies since 1978.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/17-2

Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Common Dreams
Greenpeace Activists Shut Down 77 Shell Gas Stations in Day of Action
– Common Dreams staff

Environmental activists shut down dozens of Shell gas stations across the UK, Denmark and Germany on Monday. The action was part of environmental group Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic Campaign — a bid to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic slated to begin within the next three weeks. Greenpeace has ramped up its efforts against oil company Shell as its drilling vessels drift closer to its targets in the Arctic.

Greenpeace polar bears scale a Shell gas station (Photo: Greenpeace via twitter) Earlier this week Shell’s first drill rig to near the Arctic, Noble Discoverer, lost control during high winds and ran aground near Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

“Shell can’t keep it’s drill rig under control in a protected harbor, so what will happen when it faces 20 foot swells and sea ice while drilling in the Arctic? Shell’s whole drilling program seems to be running aground…Shell cannot be trusted, and President Obama should not let its Arctic drilling program move forward,” stated Greenpeace Lead Arctic Campaigner Jackie Dragon.

On Monday the activists scaled the roof of a Shell gas station, many in sickly polar bear costumes, used barriers to block off access to pumps, and covered a Shell sign with a Save the Arctic banner. In one instance they placed a life-sized polar bear model on a station’s roof. Other campaigners chained themselves to pumps, a Greenpeace spokesman told the Independent.

Activists shut down pumps by switching emergency shut-off levers, which stop gas flow.

24 were arrested over the course of the planned actions.

All together the organization protested at over 100 gas stations and shut down up to 77, most of them in London and Edinburgh.

“Obviously, we need to ratchet up the pressure, we need to let Shell know that this isn’t just a publicity campaign, we’re going to put pressure on them until they agree to stop what they’re doing,” Greenpeace activist Graham Thompson told the Guardian.

Greenpeace’s video of the day’s actions:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-07-13/pdf/2012-17048.pdf

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-07-13/html/2012-17048.htm

Special thanks to Richard Charter

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: July 11, 2012

MOSCOW – A Russian oil company will delay drilling its first exploratory well off the northern coast of Cuba, about 180 miles from Florida, after apparently struggling to find a drilling rig that would not violate a United States embargo.

The Russian company, Zarubezhneft, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had planned to drill in August but now planned to start in November.

Finding rigs can be a challenge for oil companies operating in Cuba. To avoid violating the trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba 50 years ago, rigs can have only a small portion of their parts manufactured in the United States.

Zarubezhneft, a small state-owned company, obtained the exploration rights to potential oil fields in the waters off Cuba three years ago. Last month, it obtained a rig from the Cyprus-based drilling operator, Songa Offshore.

Cuba produces little oil now, but petroleum experts say the country’s northern coastal waters could hold reserves, which may help revive the island’s economy and ease its dependence on oil imported from Venezuela.

Half a dozen companies have signed deals to work in Cuban waters on projects that concern United States authorities. Many of the projects would be close to the United States but beyond the reach of its safety regulators. Cuba’s maritime border is in some places 50 miles from the coast of the United States.

Zarubezhneft updated its plans during a visit from Raúl Castro, Cuba’s leader and the brother of Fidel Castro, who is on a tour of former Communist allies. Seeking money for Cuba, Castro met with President Vladimir V. Putin after visiting China and Vietnam.

Songa Offshore once operated from offices in Houston, but has since moved to Singapore and Cyprus, according to its Web site.

After it contracted for the Songa rig, Zarubezhneft hired a third-party auditing company to confirm that the machine had fewer than 10 percent United States-made parts, the Russian company said in a statement. The rig is on its way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Cuba. The company plans to drill at a site called Block L near the Cuban coastal town of Cayo Santa Maria.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 12, 2012, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Russian Oil Drilling Off Cuba Is Delayed by Old Embargo.

Special thanks to Richard Charter