Shell's suit does not only seek to ensure it can drill for oil this summer. It is also trying to get the Center for Biological Diversity to pay for Shell's legal fees. These will likely run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Shell game appears to be an attempt to shut down free speech, so it can push through dangerous new drilling in the fragile Arctic ecosystem.
The Center for Biological Diversity needs help to defeat this obnoxious, anti-free-speech lawsuit, so please donate to the Center for Biological Diversity's Emergency Legal Defense Fund today. Because of this emergency, a generous Center supporter has agreed to match all donations if the Center can raise $50,000. Because I am a college student and do not have much on my hands to donate, the least I can do is spread the word. The best way to understand who to side with on this issue is to look at the history of both organizations, and whichever is more consistently respectful of both human and environmental well-being should be supported.
Shell Oil Company is the United States-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil company ("oil major") of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Shell Oil Company, including its consolidated companies and its share in equity companies, is one of America’s largest oil and natural gas producers, natural gas marketers, gasoline marketers and petrochemical manufacturers. It also holds 80% of an exploration firm called Pecten that explores and drills in various offshore locations including the oil basin nearDouala, Cameroon in cooperation with the French government-owned Elf Aquitaine (now Total).
In 1997, Shell and Texaco entered into two refining/marketing joint ventures. One combined their midwestern and western operations and was known as Equilon. The other, known as Motiva, combined the eastern and gulf coast operations of Shell Oil and Star Enterprise, itself a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Texaco.[6] After Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001, Shell purchased Texaco's shares in the joint ventures.[7] In 2002, Shell began converting these Texaco stations to the Shell brand, a process that was to be completed by June 2004 and was called "the largest retail re-branding initiative in American business history."
Until the mid 1980s Shell’s business in the United States was substantially independent, with its stock (“Shell Oil”) traded on the NYSE and with little direct involvement from the Group’s central office in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1984, Dutch Royal Shell made a bid to purchase those shares of Shell Oil Company it did not own (around 30%) and despite some opposition from some minority shareholders which led to a court case, Shell succeeded in the buy-out for a sum of $5.7 billion.[9]
Environmental
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Notice of Violation to Shell Oil Company for its infringements of the Clean Air Act at a bulk petroleum terminal the company owned in Bridgeport, Connecticut, prior to October 1, 1998. According to the report, Shell loaded a total of 28.4 million gallons of gasoline onto barges without required vapor recovery equipment on seven days in 1997 resulting in 56 tons of uncontrolled volatile organic compoundemissions. During the investigation, the EPA found that Shell built an additional loading bay in 1995 without permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Bridgeport’s facility had been recorded to produce average of about 170 tons of volatile organic compounds per year.[11] However, this modification has the potential of production 30 tons per year more of the pollution emissions.[12]
Shell Puget Sound Refinery, Anacortes, Washington, was fined $291,000 from 2006 to 2010 for violations of the Clean Air Act making it the second most-fined violator in the Pacific Northwest. As of 2011, it was listed as "high priority violator" since 2008.[13][14]
In 2008, a lawsuit was filed against Shell Oil Company for alleged Clean Air Act violation. Shell Deer Park facility, 20 miles east of Houston, was the nation’s eighth-largest oil refinery and one of the world’s largest petrochemical producers. The facility was also the second largest source of air pollution in Harris County, which ranked among the lowest in the nation in several measures of air quality.[News 1] According to Sierra Club and Environment Texas, analysis of Shell’s reports to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, air pollutants released at Deer Park since 2003 exceeded the EPA's emissions limits.[15]
Shell, working with Philips, implemented efforts to reduce the impact of its operations on the millions of migratory birds that encounter the North Sea drilling operations.[16][17]Polybutylene lawsuit
From 1978 to 1995, Shell Oil produced polybutylene pipes, which corrodes when exposed to chlorine. A class action lawsuit was filed in 1995 against Shell Oil when the polybutylene pipes caused flooding in many households in the US and Canada.[20] The settlement required Shell Oil to pay for the re-installation of piping for millions of houses for claims filed through May 2009.[21]Nigerian settlement
Main article: Wiwa family lawsuits against Shell
Author Ken Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic Nigerian minority whose hometown, Ogoniland, in the Niger Deltahas been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and which has suffered extreme and unremediated environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate oil waste dumping. Saro-Wiwa, initially as spokesperson, and then as President, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and natural waters ofOgoniland by the operations of multinational oil companies, especially Shell.[citation needed]
At the peak of his non-violent campaign, Saro-Wiwa and the other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People were arrested, hastily tried by a special military tribunal, and hanged in 1995 by the Nigerian military government of General Sani Abacha, all on charges widely viewed as entirely politically motivated and completely unfounded. Their executions provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations.
Shell has been brought on trial in New York with the accusation of having collaborated with the military executions, and in June 2009, it settled out of court for US $15 million to bring the case to an end. Ben Amunwa, director of the Remember Saro-Wiwa organization, said that "No multinational company settles out of court for $15.5 million due to "humanitarian" or "compassionate" impulses.... The real reason why Shell settled is because the evidence compiled by the plaintiffs, was damning enough to force an out of court settlement."[22]
In February 2012,[dated info] the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in a similar case filed by Esther Kiobel, widow of an anti-Shell activist, against Royal Dutch Shell may proceed through the US court system.[23]In light of the facts on its corrupt history, Shell Oil cannot be trusted. Not only does it have a track record for knowingly polluting the environment in order to save a quick buck, but it also seems to have a complete disregard for the well-being of the people who fight against it. The old mob boss saying, "if you're not with us, you're against us," comes to mind when Shell settled for $15.5 million to hush up the evidence compiled by plaintiffs, which enhances the idea that Shell might have been involved in the hasty trial and execution of non-violent activist Saro-Wiwa, among others.
On the other hand, the Center for Biological Diversity's history is less violent and more civil in its motives:
The Center for Biological Diversity was founded beneath the ancient ponderosa pines of New Mexico’s Gila wilderness, where Kierán Suckling, Peter Galvin, and Todd Schulke met while surveying owls for the U.S. Forest Service. All three were in their early twenties, with a passion for wild places; Kierán was a doctoral student in philosophy, Peter was training in conservation biology, and Todd had a background running outdoor-education programs for high-risk kids. When their surveys turned up a rare Mexican spotted owl nest in an old-growth tree, and they found out that same tree was part of a vast area slated to be razed in a massive timber sale, they took their findings to the local Forest Service manager. The Forest Service had been entrusted with shielding sensitive species from harm, but it soon became clear the agency was more invested in its relationship with big timber than in its commitment to the public to protect forest wildlife. The timber sale would go forward, in violation of the Service’s own rules.
The three young men promptly took the story to a local paper.
In the end, that big old tree never fell to the chainsaws, and Kierán, Peter and Todd becamepersonae non gratae at the Forest Service. Along with Dr. Robin Silver, an emergency room doctor, nature photographer, and grassroots advocate who had written an Endangered Species Act petition to protect the Mexican spotted owl — and joined by a growing group of other activists as word of mouth spread — they formed the group that would eventually be known as the Center for Biological Diversity. Tackling cattle-grazing abuses on the public lands where they lived, they leveraged protection for species like the southwestern willow flycatcher into orders to remove cows from hundreds of miles of vulnerable desert streams; with their campaigns to protect goshawks and owls, they shut down major timber operations throughout Arizona and New Mexico and brought an end to large-scale industrial logging in the heritage public lansds of the arid Southwest.
And that was just for starters.With each passing year the Center has expanded its territory, which now extends to the protection of species throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and international regions as remote as the North and South poles. As our range grew, and first tens, then hundreds of species gained protection as a result of our groundbreaking petitions, lawsuits, policy advocacy, and outreach to media, we went from living and working on a shoestring to having offices around the country — from relying on donated time from pro bono attorneys at large firms to building a full-time staff of dozens of prominent environmental lawyers and scientists who work exclusively on our campaigns to save species and the places they need to survive.
We’re now fighting a growing number of national and worldwide threats to biodiversity, from the overarching global problems of overpopulation and climate change to intensifying domestic sources of species endangerment, such as off-road vehicle excess. Based on our unparalleled record of legal successes — 93 percent of our lawsuits result in favorable outcomes — we’ve developed a unique negotiating position with both government agencies and private corporations, enabling us, at times, to secure broad protections for species and habitat without the threat of litigation. Now in our twenty-first year, we look forward to a future of continued expansion, creativity, and no-holds-barred action on behalf of the world’s most critically endangered animals and plants.
In the need to spread the word on this issue as quickly as possible, the background on Shell Oil was taken from Wikipedia, and the background on the Center for Biological Diversity was taken from their website.
Shell Oil is unjustly suing the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Center needs all the help we can give it in order to fight back strong. This is not the first time Shell has gone after environmentalists, and it will not be the last. As long as there are big companies stuffing their pockets with money tainted by pollution, there will be environmentalist activists there to stop them.
So please, help the Center of Biological Diversity stand against Shell's strong-arm tactics, and at least help spread the word through your own blogs, facebook pages, and by word of mouth on this issue. The Center needs to raise $50,000 to secure the matching pledge so they can defeat Shell's attack on it, free speech, and the Arctic wilderness.
While Shell is aggressively suing the Center, it is telling the Supreme Court that environmentalists should be prohibited from suing it. Do not let Shell's hypocrisy stand! Stop Shell's Strong-Arm Tactics!
UPDATE:
After writing this post, I emailed a contact at the Center of Biological Diversity asking if there was anything I could add to this blog to make my presentation of the Shell Oil suit as accurate as possible. Since the Center is busy and thus does not have time to read my post, the response I received included two articles and Shell's complaint for my reference. The links given to me are offered below, and will provide a deeper understanding on the issue.
Shell Files Pre-Emptive Offshore Drilling Lawsuit by Dan Joling of ABC News
To Avoid Last-Minute Suit, Shell Asks U.S. Court to Rule by Clifford Krauss of The New York Times
