04 July 2008

Oil company footnote

Crude Impact taught me that the Exxon Valdez clusterfuck (usually considered a major oil disaster) was hardly the beginning. Now I’ve taken a different stance on Valdez. At least it was an accident. The film offers video documentation of the cost-saving “disposal” methods Texaco used during an extraction project in Ecuador. For what they made a conscious effort to do—because there were no laws to prevent them, never again will I fill my gas tank at a Texaco station. Shell Oil gets called out pretty hard too for doing nothing to stop Nigerian executions that benefited operations in the Niger Delta. Shell Oil representatives literally sat watching as Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists were tried, convicted, and executed… so Shell Oil’s extraction project could “proceed smoothly.” I think those were the words in the memo. I greatly appreciated the film’s education on these matters. Somehow I never heard about this before. (Sshhhh. Don’t make too much noise. I think the media is sleeeeeepinggg.)

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