12 Signs That Something Big Is Happening To The Earth’s Crust Under North And South America

From:  Before Its News 

(Before It's News)

Why are fault lines and volcanoes all over North and South America suddenly waking up?  Are we moving into a time when major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will become much more common?  For the past several decades, we have been extremely fortunate to have experienced a period of extremely low seismic activity along the west coast of the United States.  You see, the west coast lies right along the infamous Ring of Fire.  Approximately 75 percent of all the volcanoes in the world are on the Ring of Fire, and approximately 90 percent of all global earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire.  Scientists tell us that it is inevitable that “the Big One” will hit California someday, but people have gotten very apathetic about this because things have been so quiet out there for so many years.  Well, now it appears that things are changing in a big way – and not just along the California coast.  The following are 12 signs that something big is happening to the earth’s crust under North and South America…

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#1 The 5.1 earthquake that shook Los Angeles on Friday was the worst earthquake that the city had seen in many years.

#2 Following that earthquake, there were more than 100 aftershocks.

#3 A 4.1 earthquake shook Los Angeles on Saturday.  Scientists are hoping that this earthquake swarm in southern California will end soon.

#4 Earlier this month, a 4.4 earthquake rattled Los Angeles so badly that it caused news anchors to dive under their desks.

#5 A 6.9 earthquake just off the coast of northern California in early March was the largest earthquake to hit the west coast of the United States since 2010.

#6 Up in Oregon, Mt. Hood recently experienced more than 100 earthquakes over the course of just a few days.

#7 During the past month, there have also been some other very unusual geologic events that have been happening up in Oregon…

• Two large landslides – one in the Columbia River Gorge dumped about 2,000 cubic yards of rock and debris on highway I84 just 3 miles west of the Hood River, and another blocked US30 near Portland.

• Loud booms and ground shaking reported by people from Lincoln to Tillamook Counties; some reported hearing a rumble, as well (No earthquakes recorded by the USGS in the area at the time.)

• A 20 ft. deep sinkhole swallowed a woman and her dog in her Portland backyard.

#8 A 4.8 earthquake rattled Yellowstone National Park on Sunday, and there have been at least 25 earthquakes at Yellowstone since Thursday.

#9 Scientists recently discovered that the Yellowstone supervolcano is now releasing far more helium gas than they had anticipated.

#10 Over the past month, there have been more than 130 earthquakes in the state of Oklahoma.  This is highly unusual.

#11 There have been several dozen earthquakes in Peru over the past month, including a 6.3 earthquake that made headlines all over the globe.

#12 Earlier this month, the northern coast of Chile was hit by more than 300 earthquakes in a seven day stretch.  41 of those earthquakes were stronger than magnitude 4.5.

Fortunately, the quake that hit Los Angeles on Friday did not cause too much lasting injury.  But it sure did shake people up.  The following is how the Los Angeles Times described the damage…

The quake, centered near La Habra, caused furniture to tumble, pictures to fall off walls and glass to break. Merchandise fell off store shelves, and there were reports of plate glass windows shattered.
In Brea, several people suffered minor injuries during a rock slide that overturned their car. Fullerton reported seven water main breaks. Carbon Canyon Road was closed.
Residents across Orange and Los Angeles counties and the Inland Empire reported swinging chandeliers, fireplaces dislodging from walls and lots of rattled nerves. The shake caused a rock slide in Carbon Canyon, causing a car to overturn, according to the Brea Police Department.

Why this particular earthquake is of such concern is because it occurred along the Puente Hills fault line.  According to one seismologist, this is the fault line that would be most likely to “eat L.A.”…

Experts said that the earthquakes occurred on the Puente Hills thrust fault, which stretches from the San Gabriel Valley to downtown Los Angeles.

Last night’s quake was shallow, which ‘means the shaking is very concentrated in a small area,’ said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson.

Hauksson revealed that the earthquake was unusual because the 5.1 quake was preceded by the weaker foreshock.

Scientists such as Hauksson are very concerned about the Puente Hills fault because it runs directly under downtown Los Angeles.  MORE

Little City, Big Heart: Middleton, ID Unanimously Bans NDAA Indefinite Detention

From:  Panda Unite

MIDDLETON, ID – In a unanimous vote of 4-0, the Middleton, Idaho city council banned the application of the NDAA and the laws of war within their city. With the passage of the Middleton resolution, 5 cities have now stood for the Constitutional rights of their people. 

What's unique about this win though, is the sincerity and quick action of the council. Middleton is a little city, with a big heart.

The 2012 NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act, contains two provisions, sections 1021 and 1022, which violate over 14 provisions of the U.S. Constitution. These sections, known as the detention provisions, allow for the indefinite military detention of any person, including an American citizen, without charge or trial. Further, they allow for the extrajudicial execution, torture, and rendition of any person held in military custody, as well as the lockdown of American cities under military control.

Middleton joins Albany, NY, Webster and Oxford, MA, Gem County, and Emmett, ID in declaring their city is not a battlefield, not subject to the laws of war and no person will:

“arrest or capture any person in Middleton, or citizen of Middleton within the United States, with the intent of “detention under the law of war,” or

actually subject a person in Middleton to “disposition under the law of war,” or

subject any person to targeted killing in Middleton, or citizen of Middleton within the United States”

PANDA Idaho’s Jason Casella noted:

“Panda Idaho would like to congratulate the great people of Middleton who have now become the second city in Idaho to block indefinite detention and laws of war. They have elected a fine group to represent them. I have been to a lot of city council meetings and have never seen one so efficient and detail oriented. The people applaud Middleton's council for honoring their oath and doing so with no reservations.”

As Jason said, the city council of Middleton deserves some special recognition. In most cities and counties, including all of the above, the NDAA Resistance had to apply massive pressure to get anything passed.

In Middleton, it was different. Thanks to the behind-the scenes work of Councilor Lenny Riccio, when the Resistance presented the Restoring Constitutional Governance Resolution for their consideration, the council did not hesitate. They understood their oaths, acting from their hearts. Without a word, and with only three citizens in the chambers asking them to defend the rights of their people, the council did not hesitate.

Acting on one accord, after less than 10 minutes of discussion, the Middleton City Council passed the RCGR unanimously on Wednesday.

PLEASE take the time with us to thank one of the city council members or mayor of Middleton for their relentless dedication to liberty:

Mayor Darin Taylor:

dtaylor@middletonidaho.us

Rob Kiser:

Rkiser@middletoncity.com

Carrie Huggins:

Chuggins@middletoncity.com

Brad Spencer

Bspencer@middletoncity.com

Lenny Riccio

Lriccio@middletoncity.com

The NDAA Resistance is rising. 6 jurisdictions have already banned the NDAA/laws of war from their area. Yours could be next. Get started, and get expert help, for your community HERE: http://pandaunite.org/takeback/

DONATE to help support these efforts across the country: http://pandaunite.org/donate

http://pandaunite.org/ndaa-little-city-big-heart-middleton-id-unanimously-bans-ndaa-indefinite-detention/

Texas Oil Spill Expected to ‘Get Much Worse’ for Wildlife

From:  EcoWatch

by Jason Schwartz, Greenpeace

 The oil spill off the coast of Galveston, TX, has the potential to get a lot worse than previously expected. The 168,000 gallons of thick, sludgy fuel oil that escaped a barge—whose hull was breached after a collision with another ship—is proving extremely difficult to contain. As of yesterday morning, oil was reported as far as 12 miles from the site of the collision.

From the start, wildlife experts have said this spill could not have been in a more sensitive spot in Galveston Bay. The area, particularly a Globally Important Bird Area called the Bolivar Flats, hosts huge numbers of migrating birds from a wide variety of species. The collision occurred in the Houston Shipping Channel. It has bird nesting and roosting sites on both of its banks.

“We expect this to get much worse,” Jessica Jubin, a spokeswoman for the Houston Audubon Society, told the Houston Chronicle. Houston Audubon is the manager of the Bolivar Flats preserve. Experts are concerned the true toll of the spill will be known over a period of years, not days.

Place and Time

Photo credit: Greenpeace

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Chicago Mayor Demands Answers From BP After Oil Spill

From:  EcoWatch 

by Brandon Baker

Though this week’s BP oil spill on Lake Michigan didn’t take place in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s territory, it was close enough.

At just 20 miles away in Whiting, IN, the estimated eight-to-12-barrel spill could have impacted the water source of about 7 million people in Chicago and its suburbs. That’s why a fiery Rahm Emanuel is demanding answers from BP and environmental agencies. He told reporters that he’d prefer a “full account.”

“I want a report on what happened, how it happened, why did it happen, how much happened and how do you prevent it from ever happening again,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “Chicago’s water was rated No. 1. I don’t want anything to ever endanger it. We’re investing in it. I want to make sure BP is a good corporate citizen next door in Indiana.”

Crews have been cleaning a Lake Michigan oil spill this week from a BP refinery in Whiting, IN. Photo credit: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

BP’s initial assessment was that the spill could have totaled between 378 and 756 gallons of crude oil. BP crews used vacuum trucks to remove about 5,200 gallons of an oil-water mixture from the site near the BP refinery and the shoreline of a nearby beach. Still, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says there are appear to be no negative effects on the lake.

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Oil Spill One Year Anniversary: How Locals Feel Since the Spill

From:  Arkansas Matters 

Drew Petrimoulx

It's been one year since the oil spill in Mayflower

 

 MAYFLOWER, AR -- Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the oil spill in Mayflower that dumped hundreds of thousands of crude oil into a residential neighborhood. 
   
The oil eventually poured into a marsh area that flows into Lake Conway.
   
Since then, there has been a lot of worry about the health of the popular fishing and recreation spot that is also home to many people.

Spill Sent Wildlife Packing

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Pro-Fracking Guest: Appearing On The Daily Show 'Felt Like Three Hours Of Waterboarding'

From:  HuffPost 

The Huffington Post  | by  James Gerken

 

 

The "Daily Show" ran a segment on hydraulic fracturing on Thursday night that featured its "correspondent" Asif Mandvi interviewing people on the controversial oil and gas extraction process known as "fracking."

Mandvi talked to Marita Noon, a former Christian speaker and the executive director of New Mexico-based Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, a non-profit lobbying organization that also operates a group called Energy Makes America Great. 

"Oil and gas companies are quite good at self-regulating or self-policing," Noon told Mandvi. She said she doesn't really see room for improvement and argued that oil and gas companies care about the communities where they operate. "Because the average person doesn't understand fracking," she added, "the environmentalists are able to use fear, uncertainty and doubt to plant ideas into people's minds."

In a prebuttal posted on the conservative news site Townhall on March 17, Noon thanked the "Daily Show" for letting her speak about hydraulic fracturing, but said the experience of being interviewed for the show "felt like three hours of waterboarding."

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Did Enbridge Use Toxic Chemicals to Clean Up Their Oil Spill in Kalamazoo?

From:  Vice

By Michael Toledano Dec 24 2013

From the Kalamazoo clean-up site. Photo by Michelle Barlond-Smith.

It’s been three and a half years since Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline ruptured in Marshall, Michigan, leaking more than 843,000 gallons of diluted tar sands bitumen into the Kalamazoo River. It was the largest on-land oil spill in the history of the USA, and remains, so far, as the largest spill of tar sands oil ever. Yet despite Enbridge’s immense, ongoing clean-up operation, which has spanned more than three years, cost over a billion dollars, and removed significantly more oil from the river than the company will admit it spilled, those living in Enbridge’s sacrifice zone have more questions than answers—even as most areas of the river have been re-opened for public use. High on the list of concerns is a chilling refrain: What are these chemicals that work crews have been dumping into the river in massive quantities, and are they dangerous?

At first, eyewitness accounts of workers spraying what appeared to be chemicals at the ground or out of boats, pouring unidentified liquid detergents into the water, or dumping hundreds of truckloads of sand-like powder into the river from dump trucks, became subjects of intrigue and speculation among community members and local activists. Another telltale sign was mysterious, oily foam floating on the water, and frequent helicopter deliveries of cargo to back-wooded areas of the Kalamazoo. There was an air of secrecy amongst those who carried out the work. They conducted large operations at night and told the residents that they were only spraying water or pesticides to repel mosquitos. Michelle Barlond-Smith, a former resident of the heavily impacted Baker Trailer Park, told me that “a lot of us thought they were hiding and covering up stuff, trying to bury it, the oil. The first time I heard about it was probably a month into the spill. One of my neighbors said, ‘Hey Michelle, they’re back there, they’re spraying something on the ground.’ And I’d go racing back there and the minute they would see me they would take off, running—literally sometimes running.”

Craig Ritter, an intrepid explorer of the Kalamazoo and a fisherman turned activist, told me similar stories. “Along with other residents, we were seeing a lot of dump trucks backing up to the river and dumping product in, which we thought at the time was probably sand,” he said. He had assumed that the trucks were there to “put sand back into the river [in order] to fill the holes that they were dredging,” but discovered that the trucks weren’t carrying sand at all. “When I did get a chance to get close to one of those trucks it had a real strong herbicide, almost pesticide, chemical smell to it,” Ritter explained. Like Michelle Barlond-Smith, Ritter had also sensed that Enbridge was hiding something. As a result of his repeated explorations of the Kalamazoo, he found himself occasionally “followed around by personnel vehicles,” and noticed “cars pulled up, and kind of eyeballing, if not having a camera out and taking pictures of me” when he lingered in sections of the river that had already been re-opened for public use.

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Enbridge Kalamazoo oil spill victim holds community meeting spellbound

From:  Vancouver Observer 

Mike Chisholm  Posted: Jan 31st, 2013

 

 

Michelle BarlondSmith in a photo by Mike Chisholm 

 

 

Michelle BarlondSmith had a blunt assessment of her experience with the 2010 Enbridge oil spill on the Kalamazoo River.  “You get to say goodbye to a lot of friends.”

Speaking to a standing room crowd at Vancouver’s Mt. Pleasant’s Heritage Hall Thursday night, the photographer and former airline worker from Kalamazoo, Michigan recounted the hours and days living along the Kalamazoo River after an Enbridge pipeline spilled almost one million gallons of diluted Alberta oil into the river and along the riverbank.

BarlondSmith used her own photographs of the devastation to the river and wildlife along the river, the subsequent clean-up efforts and the health impacts to provide a first-hand impression of what an oil spill of diluted bitumen can do to a community.

“We had four deaths in first year –two died within two months. I now have said goodbye to 17 people who I met since the oil spill,” said BarlondSmith.  “When these spills happen, there are going to be consequences.”  The Vancouver Observer has not been able to confirm the validity of BarlondSmith's statement that people died as a result of the spill, despite inquiries in Kalamazoo.  There are no other reports of such deaths.

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Preston Manning gives Enbridge advice on 'winning' a big oil campaign

From: Vancouver Observer

Mychaylo Prystupa

Posted: Mar 27th, 2014

Northern Gateway VP Janet Holder: "I'm not running for election."

 

Northern Gateway executive vice-president Janet Holder and Preston Manning at GLOBE 2014 in Vancouver Thursday. Kim Bellavance Photography. 

 

 

Reform Party founder and conservative icon Preston Manning stepped into B.C. oil politics Thursday, when he appeared to give Enbridge’s vice-president Janet Holder advice on using the lessons of politics in building more support for the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline.

Manning was seated next to Holder at a “GLOBE 2014” conference panel in Vancouver that addressed the challenges of transporting oil.  He told the panel, which included pipeline engineering and railway executives, that large companies need to communicate their projects as if they were trying to “win an election.”  

“Imagine that the project name is on a ballot,” said Manning.  “Imagine that the alternatives are on the ballot… and for any of those options to prevail in our current climate in which we live, it needs to win.”
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Eighteen people have died near the Michigan Kalamazoo River Tar Sands Bituman Spill of 2010

From:  Arlington TX Barnett Shale Blogger

Update>>>4/4/13 In response to the Exxon spill in an Arkansas neighborhood, this link updates how many people and counting died within one mobile home park….

“…where residents of one trailer court and neighborhood along the oiled riverbank blame exposure to tar sands oil and fumes for illness outbreaks and eighteen deaths––and counting.11″

Update>>> “On July 25, 2010, a tar sands oil pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Mi. The diluted bitumen traveled 40 miles down the Kalamazoo River to Morrow Lake. More than a month later, health providers reported 145 patients with symptoms associated with the spill. State officials surveyed 550 people from communities along the river and found 53 percent of the residents reported health problems – headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments.”

——————–

We requested more detail in these 11 deaths and Dr Ott responded…

Begin forwarded message:

From: Riki Ott

Date: May 14, 2012 1:51:59 PM CDT

Subject: Re: Dr Ott Question on the 11 deaths in the small trailor park since the spill

Kim, Dick,Sorry, this got buried in my inbox. The source for this is Michelle BarlondSmith who lived in the trailer court until last week. The 11 who died lived in the same trailer court. While we can’t say the 11 died b/c of the tar sands oil spill, which flowed right past their doorsteps and yards, the people who died included some whose cancer was in remission or had other chronic illnesses that worsened after the spill. Michelle is co-founding a new group, Shout Out!, to share these stories and other similar ones with activists like yourselves. Shout Out is planning a “wall” of names and brief descriptions of lives truncated by the Enbridge disaster.Hope this helps.
RIki

—————————————————————————–

Riki Ott, marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor, reported that

“Already eleven people have died in one small trailer court near the Kalamazoo River from illnesses that they and their doctors believe were triggered or worsened by the tar sands (spill) that flowed past their homes and soiled the river banks.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/gulf-oil-spill-anniversary_b_1440704.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Here is the Kalamazoo video two years later.

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Ohio Executive Pleads Guilty, Faces Three Years in Prison For Dumping Fracking Wastewater

From:  EcoWatch

by Brandon Baker

Just over a year after he pleaded not guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act, an Ohio wastewater company owner changed his tune regarding allegations that he dumped or ordered the dumping of thousands of toxic and potentially radioactive fracking wastewater into a storm drain.

Ben Lupo, 63, pleaded guilty in federal court in Cleveland this week, the Associated Press reported. He faces up to three years in prison, a year of supervised release and fines that could total $250,000. He will be sentenced on June 16.

D&L Energy, one of Ben Lupo’s many companies, had an Ohio Department of Natural Resources permit revoked after the owner was accused of ordering the dumping of toxic fracking wastewater. Lupo pleaded guilty this week. Photo credit: WKSU.org/via M.L. Shultze

“[Lupo] put his own business interests ahead of the health and safety of our citizens, natural resources and wildlife,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. ”He will now be held accountable for this terrible crime.”

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Ohio Pipeline Spill Leaked Double the Amount of Crude Oil Originally Estimated

From:  EcoWatch 

by Brandon Baker

The pipeline that oozed oil into the Oak Glen Nature Preserve near Cincinnati, OH a week ago leaked more crude oil than originally estimated—about two times more.

Federal investigators now estimate that 20,000 gallons leaked last week, threatening the drinking supply and wildlife in the area, the Associated Press reported.

Federal investigators say a pipeline in Ohio leaked 20,000 gallons of crude oil last week. Photo credit: U.S. Environmental Agency/via RT America

Sunoco spokesman Jeff Shields said a clamp has been engineered just for the 20-inch diameter pipeline as part of a federally approved plan. While Shields said the pipeline had a 5-inch crack, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the matter is still under investigation.

The pipeline has been repaired and reopened on Monday, according to Sunoco Logistics. Sunoco had turned off a stretch of the pipeline from Hebron, KY, to Lima, OH as a result of the leak. The new clamp was tested before oil resumed flowing.

The company owns most of the Mid-Valley Pipeline Co. pipeline, which extends 1,000 miles from Michigan to Texas. 

The pipeline carries crude oil to refineries in Ohio and Oregon. Inspectors last checked it in 2011. A system-wide inspection of the 1,119-mile-long pipeline five years ago resulted in a $48,700 fine for Sunoco, which did not address corrosion problems in the pipeline.

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BP Confirms Oil Spill into Lake Michigan From Whiting Refinery

From:  Fox 17 News 

NEW PHOTOS OF CLEAN-UP EFFORTS HERE

By Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune reporter

WHITING, Ind. (March 25, 2014) – A malfunction at the BP refinery in Whiting forced a slug of crude oil into Lake Michigan on Monday, the company confirmed today.

It was not immediately clear how much oil spilled into the lake or how long the discharge continued. A spokesman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said the leak was plugged by 1 a.m. today.

The effect on Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for 7 million people in Chicago and the suburbs, likely won’t be determined for several days. Emergency response crews from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard are on the scene.

Slide Show  

The malfunction apparently occurred at the refinery’s largest distillation unit, the centerpiece of a $4 billion overhaul that allowed BP to process more heavy Canadian oil from the tar sands region of Alberta. The unit, which Dean said has resumed normal operations, performs one of the first steps in the refining of crude oil into gasoline and other fuels.

SENATOR CARL LEVIN STATEMENT

Read more: http://fox17online.com/2014/03/25/bp-confirms-oil-spill-into-lake-michigan-from-whiting-refinery/#ixzz2x3eatEmx

BREAKING: Tar sands oil spills into Lake Michigan by BP

From:  Surf Great Lakes 

Posted by B. Wallace on Mar 25, 2014 

 

Reports are coming in that a little over 500 gallons of oil has spilled into Lake Michigan from the BP Whiting refinery, which just went under massive upgrades to take on tar sands crude from Alberta Canada. This refinery and the tar sands upgrades have already caused major health effects in the nearby communities because of pollution and massive petcoke piles that continue to pop up near the refineries and Lake Michigan.

Reuters reports:

A malfunction at BP’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery caused an oil spill into Lake Michigan on Tuesday morning, according to a report on The Times of Northwest Indiana website.
The incident was discovered at 4:30 p.m. Monday, according to the report that quoted company spokesman Scott Dean.Dean told the paper BP was not yet know the amount of oil discharged into the lake due to the disruption in the processing unit at the refinery.
The refinery has a capacity of 405,000 barrels per day.

You can see footage of the clean-up from NBC Chicago

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Trillions of dollars needed to fund unconventional expansion, Deloitte study says

From:  SNL

By Mark Passwaters

North America could see a "prodigious amount" of unconventional oil and gas production consuming trillions of dollars in funding over the next two decades, the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions said in a new report.

In the report, "The challenge of renaissance: Managing an unprecedented wave of oil and gas investment," Deloitte said fully unlocking the unconventional oil and gas potential in the United States and Canada will call for "a vast and sustained amount of investment" if production totals are to meet analysts' expectations.

"The [U.S. Energy Information Administration] estimates nearly $5 trillion in upstream oil and gas investment is needed in North America through 2035 to maintain current levels of output and meet future demand growth," the report's authors said. "This investment translates into a prodigious amount of onshore well activity and oil sands development."

Using EIA estimates, Deloitte said approximately 630,000 new wells will need to be drilled to produce the technically recoverable reserves available in U.S. shale gas and tight oil fields. Approximately 410,700 of those wells would be in shale gas plays, with more than 90,000 potential wells in the Marcellus Shale and 21,000 in the Eagle Ford Shale. MORE

Life after CNOOC’s Nexen deal: Is China’s honeymoon with Canada’s oil patch over?

From:   Financial Post

by Jeff Lewis and Claudia Cattaneo

After spending roughly $30-billion on Canadian oil and natural gas assets over the last six years, making it the largest foreign investor in Canadian energy, China is grappling with issues that have long plagued its North American rivals, including high costs, operational challenges, aboriginal issues and volatile bitumen prices

Handout/Nexen 

At a recent conference at Beijing’s Four Seasons Hotel, one of many featuring trade missions from Canada promoting energy-related investment, Feng Zhiqiang wondered aloud about the next blockbuster Chinese energy deal in Alberta’s oil patch.

“If Sinopec decides to do its own Nexen, what would Canada do?” the chief executive and chairman of Sinopec Daylight Energy Ltd. asked.

The question was put to Canadian political and energy powerbrokers, including Joe Oliver, Canada’s natural resources minister, Rich Coleman, B.C.’s natural gas minister, Alberta energy minister Ken Hughes and David Collyer, the head of the Calgary-based oil industry association.

“The room virtually went silent,” recalled Wenran Jiang, director of the Canada-China Energy and Environment Forum and an advisor to the Alberta government on China, who organized the event that day. “Nobody was able to answer that question.”  MORE

Dirty Kochs will dish out millions for polluting this Texas town

From:  Grist 

By Brentin Mock

Alan Cordova

The U.S. Department of Justice just slapped another polluter around. Yesterday, Justice officials ordered the Koch brothers-owned Flint Hills Resources company to pay $350,000 in Clean Air Act fines for spewing thousands of tons of hazardous air pollutants from one of its chemical plants in Port Arthur, Texas. The company must also spend upwards of $30 million on equipment upgrades to reduce its emissions for particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide — agents of asthma, lung disease, and death, respectively.

This is no small matter for the Gulf Coast city, about 90 minutes east of Houston. This is the dirtiest of the dirtiest areas in America. It’s where where the Keystone XL pipeline is scheduled to dump tar-sands oil from Canada. The Koch bros’ plant is just one of a gaggle of petrochemical processing facilities, oil refineries, waste incinerators, and gas pipelines strangling Port Arthur, a city also beset by ghastly levels of lung disease and cancer. Then there’s the social asphyxiation of poverty and racism on the predominantly black and Latino city.

It’s for these reasons that Port Arthur has long been considered a priority environmental justice area for the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, grassroots activists like Hilton Kelley, founder of the group Community In-Power and Development Association, has been fighting these companies for decades. Kelley was awarded the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize in 2011 for his efforts.

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Canada opens a pipeline to China

From:  Market Watch

By MarketWatch 

An earlier version of this story omitted initial reference to Malaysia. The story has been corrected.

ReutersCnooc wins Canadian government approval to buy Nexen.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Canada’s government has ruled: Selling two key energy companies to Asia is good for the nation. 

Facing a Monday deadline, the government announced late Friday that the $15 billion bid the China National Offshore Oil Corp., or Cnooc Ltd. CEO +1.53% , made in July for Calgary-based Nexen Inc. provides a “net benefit” for Canada. 

It also approved a $5.2 billion takeover of Progress Energy Resources Corp. by Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company. See: Canada OKs Cnooc-Nexen, Petronas-Progress bids.

How the government reached its decision is a bit of a mystery. Just a month ago it looked like national security concerns would scuttle the Petronas-Progress deal, which in turn cast a very dark cloud over the Cnooc-Nexen takeover. 

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