Western Australia:James Price Point : Gas Hub ::Breach of Trust

Update from James Price Point proposed Gas Hub site:

Despite assurances given to the leader of the aboriginal clans opposing the establishment of the proposed Gas Hub by Woodside that they would not attempt to occupy James Price Point prior to the group leaders return from Sydney, On Monday morning a Woodside/Hagstrom convoy attempted to do precisely that -move onsite.Trucks, drilling equipment, four wheel drives, large trucks with tanks and pumping systems, a semi trailer carrying two-tracked machines, water tanks, fire trucks and ambulance plus heaps of security personnel arrived at the Barred Creek Turnoff to be confronted (and turned away) by a small but committed group comprising mainly elderly women and babies.

Western Australian Premier Brumbys intention to compulsorily acquire the land "to create much needed aboriginal jobs" is a complete beatup. Local aboriginals already enjoy among the highest levels of employment in Australia.Many own their own businesses-in the tourism industry which could be irrepairably affected by the proposed Gas Hub.

If Woodside do not consider it necessary to act in good faith when dealing with the local community then they should expect that the local community would not want them to be there.

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Australia's Wild Wild West #nogashub

The Montara Wake Up Call

We need only look as far as the PTTEP Montara Disaster of 2009 to understand the possibility for UnderSea Oil and Gas Extractive processes to depart drastically from their operational optimum performance, becoming a major threat to the environment in places which are exceedingly difficult to measure or mitigate.

The Premier of Western Australia Colin Barnett has recently initiated processes designed to disposess the Kimberley Land Council of land which a consortium of some of the worlds major petroleum extractive companies wish to use to facilitate their multi-billion dollar gas hub designed to connect the massive Browse offshore Gasfield to their supply chain.

The Premier's aggressive and intimidatory stance against the moderately controlled KLC mirrors the cavalier treatment of Peru's indigenous peoples rights by that countrys President Pinera, whose government used police to massacre indigenous protesters in Bagua Peru in 2009. Premier Barnett's publicly issued statement of intent to commence compulsory acquisition proceedings "because of the premiers frustration with delays" is typical of the jackboot diplomacy Australian colonial governments have applied to Australia's indigenous people since arrival, pushing them roughly aside to serve other interest groups.In the case of the James Price Gas Hub, the interest group is a consortium almost exclusively made up of perpetrators of among the deadliest and most destructive petroleum extractive disasters in the country.

Chevron is well known for its subsidiary Texaco's cavalier ecovandalism in Ecuador and under Chevrons stewardship the subsequent use of legal loopholes to delay the $US27 billion cost of remedial work. Chevron also has a long history of corporate piracy. Chevron is focussing much of its future growth expectation on the Western Australian Offshore Gas Fields.

Who can forget BHP-Billiton's OK Tedi in remote Papua New Guinea as a bright example of corporate responsibility. BHP-Billiton are another partner.

Do I need find links to BP Americas Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oilspill?? To their credit they continue to mitigate.The overall process however exposed multiple layers of inadequacy in corporate and government systems, with multiple points of failure identified.

Australia needs to take heed of the lessons of Montara, which was never properly mitigated. Government silence and exhaustive parliamentary inquiries miss the point that not one drop of PTTEP oil was spilt on the floor of their committee room, and they are highly unlikely to find contamination there. However, as with the Deepwater Horizon Oilspill, vast underwater plumes were found after the US Government had declared that all the oil had "disappeared. The US Government was forced to restate its position. Following the successful Capping of Montara all monitoring and remediation stopped. We simply said out of sight out of mind and left our mess there. The PTTEP drilling rig is said to have been a cheaper to use, higher risk 30 year old technologically superceded model, which the company perhaps even had a duty to their shareholders to use in preference to the safer later and more expensive options. They were certainly entitled to use this dangerous dinosaur rig because Australias lax legal regime permitted them to.

Companies such as Chevron target jurisdictions with the weakest compliance regimes worldwide as providing the most profitable extractive options. Australia fits the bill perfectly

US fine BP:Call for Globally equitable application

The reported $30billion plus fine on BP for the Gulf #Oilspill amounts to an elevated level of hypocrisy by the US.The fine appears to be imposed on top of cleanup costs and compensation payments.It may well impact BPs (or its insurers) ability to fund continued compensation, mitigation and cleanup operations.If it is fair and just that BP is to be so penalised then Chevron should also be hit even harder for the mess it continues to deny responsibility for in Ecuador.The ecovandalism there is intentional and has severely impacted the health and capacity to live for the primarily indigenous local population affected.Mitigation & reparations for this travesty calculated at $27billion now appear vastly under-calculated in the wake of Deepwater Horizon.Not forgetting Nigeria, where a virtual whose who of the oil mister bigs have effected spillages of the scale of Deepwater Horizon on a virtually annual basis. These are US and EU companies wilfully taking advantage of weak home legislation in the countries of extraction to continue to deploy archaic equipment and stone aged practices. These practices can be most effectively curtailed by 1st world nations penalising extractives for their international ecovandalism, taking responsibility as the consumer nation. Taking action against a company which has put its hand up and its wallet on the table as BP has done in the Gulf,while feigning ignorance of the unacceptable methods used globally is wrong,unethical and smacks of political expedience.

BP Gulf Oil Spill-The Good Side

As with all things, there is a little bad,however good-there is a little good,however bad.

Oil spills of this magnitude are not a new thing.In fact,the fuel in your tank possibly comes from an area such as Nigeria,Ecuador or Peru where Oil companies don't have nearly the public scrutiny as is the case with the Deepsea Horizon Oilspill disaster. Or the fuel in the bus you caught today;perhaps it came from Trafigura, a major

oil broker which saw fit to dump its toxic waste from a questionable at-sea desalting operation around the Abidjan area.Did you see the Crude movie,about how Chevron subsidiary Texaco wilfully polluted an area the size of the State of Delaware,and,refusing to accept responsibility,are the respondents in a $US27billion lawsuit,the worlds largest.

Infamously,Alberta Canadas highly controversial and heavily ecologically destructive #Tarsands projects have polarised Canadians and people internationally.Venezuela has its own Tarsands project under development in the highly eco-sensitive indigenous peoples Orinoco River region.Statoil,owned by the clean green Norwegian Government,exploits deposits in Africa and Canada with not quite the care taken in their home North Sea operations.In Zimbabwe and other African countries there are the blood diamond mines.In Madagascar there is Huge allocation of native forest logging. Jaguarete of Brazil has logging operations in Paraguay which create farmland by destroying uncontacted peoples & rare wildlife habitat.

Last year,in ostensibly 1st world capitalist Australia, a Thai company called PTTEP hosted a devastating explosion on their #Montara well platform, triggering an eerily similar catastrophe to Deepwater Horizon-a catastrophe which took 3 long months to contain,and polluted 24,000 square kilometres of remote pristine North West Australian waters. The issues this catastrophe brought to light (lack of effective governance, lack of compliance monitoring, and the failure of extractive exploratory/process licensing to ensure adequate technological safeguards are in place PRIOR to the disaster) are compounded by a drawn out inquiry,still incomplete, and,forgotten, the apparent complete absence of any but the most cursory cleanup efforts. The pollution reached some areas of Indonesia. The Federal Australian Government has, apparently ignoring this ill managed disaster, last week granted further licenses,in the inshore Margaret River area. BP Deepwater Horizon 's Gulf Oilspill magnifies the issues which the world has not quite grasped;the magnitude of the human suffering and ecovandalism, whether intentional or accidental, one thousand fold.On the doorstep of the worlds media powerhouse, about as in your face as it could get. This is GOOD.In the first few days of the spill, Arnold Schwarznegger withdrew all offshore extractive licenses.President Obama reversed his stance and policies on offshore drilling,perhaps sparing the populous US East Coast and remote Alaskan Bering Sea a similar catastrophic event. BP,and the oil industry are under the glare of the spotlight as they would never have wished for,but not in a good

way.

One year ago tomorrow,in Peru,indigenous protesters,supported by indigenous organisation AIDESEP,were massacred by Police while protesting against the exploration of their indigenous areas,lands which they have had custodianship.The exploration was consented to by the non, and many say anti-indigenous,pro extractive Peruvian government of President Pinera.This deeply disturbing incident is one of the better publicised arbitrary use of state power to brutally enforce the short term commercial gain of foreign extractives,over the interests of local,and particularly indigenous people.Not to mention the flora,fauna and ecosystems whose living components have no direct voice in the often corrupt consultative processes. These extractive operators are not solely to blame,nor are the governments whose political tenure is seen to be strengthened by "sound economic performance.There are current mining issues in Papua New Guinea,Guinea, Kazakhstan, and I am just informed'our suspicions are confirmed for war torn Darfur,Sudan.

• As businesses,communities and individuals we use these polluting fossil fuels and lubricants in ways which are difficult to completely do away with, easier though to use less of. The pollution is as much about our immediate environment, but moreso, about sustainable equitable partnerships, between all parties,human cultural or ecological.We must ensure that those aspects within our capability to address,are addressed.
• As authorities and governments responsible to communities for oversight of extractive operations,distribution and monitoring,more can and should be done in the countries which have the greatest wealth,but much can be done in those countries lacking economic scale.Because control is with the consumer,the consumer countries and authorities are best positioned to implement a chain of responsibility regime which ensures sustainability and Fair Pay without humanrights violation, using worlds best practice technology and implementation,with effective disaster mitigation in place(or readily available) prior to commencement.
• As companies, Extractive Process Operators,especially mining oil gas and logging Contractors and chain solutions providers must better co-ordinate their work and technologies to ensure that the practices of the past stay in the past,that there is a future for extractives, oh,and the rest of us.