Updates from tar sands resistance in so-called “Utah”

“Disorderly Conduct” by Sidhe, a message to US Oil Sands and other killers

On Sept. 4th, Utah Tar Sands Resistance interrupted the 2014 Uintah Basin Energy Summit, a yearly conference where tar sands and oil shale speculators are exalted and anyone “not excited” about the destruction of the Book Cliffs is shut out and silenced.

Land defender Sidhe had planned to share her entire poem with the 700 conference goers, but police–already aware of the conference organizers’ insecurities and impatience–would not cede a moment to their dissenters. Sidhe was booked into the Uintah County Jail on suspicion of “disorderly conduct,” an exceedingly fitting charge police could level against the tar sands speculators destroying the planet who were in the room, but alas, the police work for the capitalists, not the people.

“Disorderly Conduct” by Sidhe

A message to all of you short-sighted killers
What kind of world will you leave behind for your children
When you’ve squeezed every last drop of life from the land
With your greed and your murder you’ve wrought with your plans

I’d like to remind you your money means nothing
When the water’s been blackened and the creatures are starving
You toy with a force you do not understand
Your chemicals won’t wash all that blood off your hands

First Nations fight cancer up in Athabasca
Your oil trains are time bombs impending disaster
Your pipelines will leak and your cesspools will sprawl
And your babies are left with the brunt of it all

What of the animals caught in the tar?
What of the forests left clear cut and scarred?
What of those atrocities I didn’t witness?
Like Serafino in Columbia sending assassins
To murder union organizers who stood up and spoke out
In the back of my mind I can still hear them shout
I am made of this land you are made of the same
The planet is dying and you are to blame

Are you proud of yourselves? Look at what you’ve become
Heartless machines, so frigid and numb
So reluctant to think that you may just be wrong
That you hear the dissent and you send in the guns.

Upcoming Events on the Land:

Sept. 12-15: Join Trans & Women Organizers on the Plateau

Sept. 19-21: Fall Campout in the Book Cliffs: A Weekend of Stories & Connecting with the Land

More in recent actions:

Colorado Plateau Resistance shuts down tar sands mine construction

Utah Tar Sands Resistance received information regarding a direct action that took place at the US Oil Sands strip mine construction site. These folks are bad ass!

The group released the following video and below the video, a communique:

The Colorado Plateau and its inhabitants are under invasion on multiple fronts of the energy industry. This tar sands mine is a bloody blip in a bigger scheme threatening this land, including the reopening of uranium mines that have poisoned indigenous communities for generations; the planned construction of a nuclear generator in Green River, Utah; violent and vast scraping of the land and squandering of sacred water in pursuit of lowest-grade fuel sources like tar sands and oil shale; a new “oil” refinery in Green River perhaps to centralize production and distribution of those super-toxic tar sands and oil shale fuels; and all of this paid for and made possible by the dangerous fracking boom, which is poisoning our air and water and killing the most vulnerable members of our communities, our babies and old people. This second Big Buildup of the Colorado Plateau is similar to the first Big Buildup of the 20th Century, which fostered disastrous projects like the Glen Canyon Dam, the Navajo Generating station, and the Peabody coal mine at Black Mesa; this second Big Buildup of the Colorado plateau also resembles the initial conquering and genocide of this land by the American government and white settlers. In those prior historical times and today, masters of industry and thus colonialism must control the land and subjugate its people in order to consolidate the wealth of the land in the hands of very few white elites. Their most powerful weapons are and always have been racism and patriarchy and their value system is heartless capitalism. We are forever in contempt of their scheme. This energy industry is a murderous syndicate whose business plans for the future entail the destruction of life on the planet via climate-change catastrophes and crises. Now is the time for all who have something to contribute to give all that you can to the final shut-down of projects like the US Oil Sands tar sands mine and all the many tentacles sucking the life of the Colorado Plateau and Grand Mother Earth herself.

Direct Action Against Utah Tar Sands

The Vigil Continues! The plateau needs us, and we will do our best to fulfill the commitment we have made to this land, which has already given us so much.

Video: Work stopped ALL WEEK at tar sands strip mine!

National Environmental Groups Stand With Utah Land Defenders

PRESS RELEASE: Opponents to enforce shutdown of tar sands mine today (July 21st)

UPDATE: ALL 21 LAND DEFENDERS HAVE BEEN RELEASED.

After a massive direct action protest today at the site of U.S. Oil Sands’ tar sands strip-mining site, a total of 21 were arrested and are currently awaiting charges at Uintah County Jail in Vernal, Utah. In addition to protestors, those acting as legal observers, independent media, and jail support were arrested, as well as several indigenous and trans individuals whose safety we are deeply concerned about.

Early this morning land defenders locked themselves to equipment being used to clear-cut and grade an area designated for the tar sands’ companies processing plant, as well as a fenced “cage” used to store the equipment. Others formed a physical blockade with their bodies to keep work from happening, and to protect those locked-down to the equipment. Banners were also hung off the cage that read: “You are trespassing on Ute land” and “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.”

13 people were arrested for locking to equipment. An additional six people were arrested after sitting in the road to prevent the removal of those being taken away in two police vans. Two of the protesters arrested were injured. One was taken a nearby hospital to be treated, while the other is being treated at the Uintah County Jail. The nature of their injuries is not being disclosed by the county sheriffs.

Two additional people were arrested when they arrived at Uintah Country Jail to provide support to the land defenders inside. An estimated 10 armed deputies with police dogs were standing outside the jail wearing bullet proof vests. Those at the jail to provide support were told that the deputies were there to “deter” any supporters from actually coming to the jail.

Currently all 21 individuals are still being processed and held.

Support these brave land defenders who put their hearts and bodies on the line by donating to their legal fund.

Rising Tide North America is handling donations through The Action Network. Donate to the land defenders’ legal support fund using this secure link

IT’S ON: Major Tar Sands Construction Underway in Utah

Canadian company U.S Oil Sands has paid their reclamation bond of $2.2 million and has now begun major construction at their second tar sands strip mine in the Book Cliffs of Utah.

U.S Oil Sands’ immediate plans are to clear cut 62 acres of forests and sagebrush land, according to their operations plan, but this spat of clearing may not end until 213 acres of Douglas firs, Pinyon pines, sagebrush and grasses are razed. Long-term plans by this one company threaten up to 32,000 acres of diverse wild lands.

U.S Oil Sands giant belly scrapers and bulldozers have already observably cleared an estimated 20 acres, or the size of a football stadium.

With grasses, shrubs and trees obliterated, the bulldozers are creating massive dust storms that are pummeling PR Canyon to the east, vital habitat for elk, deer, black bears and much more. The dangerously opaque dust clouds routinely cross Seep Ridge Road, substantially blocking drivers’ visibility, causing a major road hazard for which no signage has been posted. Our extensive monitoring of their operations reveal that absolutely no dust control efforts–like water sprinkling–are currently being used to protect the environment, wildlife or motorists.

Click here to read more…

At Risk: Chaco Canyon

Ban Fracking on Federal Lands!

From Energy Reality:

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

•    Click here to learn more about fracking.
•    Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
•    Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
•    Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

Also see:

Is Nothing Sacred? Fracking and Chaco Culture National Historic Park

BLM narrows proposed Chaco drilling sites to four

 

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Four Corners region of the U.S., preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian historical areas in the country. The site hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest and the area is considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people.

Both Chaco Canyon National Park and Otero Mesa in New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, are being targeted for exploratory research for oil and gas extraction.

• Click here to learn more about fracking.
• Read Gloria Flora’s article ”Fracking the Commons.”
• Read an essay on fighting oil and gas development in National Forests.
• Take our partner’s call to action to ban fracking on federal lands.

– See more at: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/fracking-chaco-canyon/#sthash.sap0sexw.dpuf

Green River oil refinery proposal returns

The Green River oil refinery proposal is back.

This project would place an oil refinery right on the banks of the Green River, which feeds into the Colorado. This refinery is one of many extraction industry projects currently in play, which together would turn Utah into an energy colony–from the tar sands & oil shale of Eastern Utah, to this proposed refinery and a nucluear power plant moving South, this all spells destruction for our future.

PUBLIC HEARING FOR COMMENTS TODAY IN GREEN RIVER, UTAH:
*When: April 30, 2014, 6:00 pm
*Where: John Wesley Powell River History Museum, 1765 East Main Street, Green River, Utah
*Host: Utah Division of Air Quality

SUBMIT A WRITTEN COMMENT BY MAY 2, 2014 here.

NO OIL REFINERY ON THE GREEN RIVER!

Major gas, oil project up for review in Utah

(Associated Press) SALT LAKE CITY – The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is seeking public comment on its draft study of a company’s proposal to significantly boost its gas and oil production in the Uintah Basin.

Newfield Exploration Co., Utah’s largest crude oil producer, would be able to add 5,750 new oil and gas wells over a 16-year period at an existing field under the plan.

The Deseret News reported the Monument Butte Project covers 120,000 acres near Myton, and would result in 170 miles of new roads and new pipelines in Duchesne and Uintah counties.

The BLM says its plan is the most restrictive for new oil and gas development across sensitive landscapes while still meeting project needs.

The agency will accept public comment on the plan through Feb. 4.

NM County First in US to Ban ALL Oil and Gas Extraction

Mora Valley, New Mexico

From EcoWatch:

Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.

Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes.

“Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”

“This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey.

“The vote of Mora commission chair John Olivas and vice-chair Alfonso Griego to ban drilling and fracking is not only commendable, it is a statement of leadership that sets the bar for communities across the State of New Mexico,” said CELDF community organizer and Mora County resident, Kathleen Dudley. She explained that the ordinance calls for an amendment to the New Mexico Constitution that “elevates community rights above corporate property rights.”

Mora County joins Las Vegas, NM, which in 2012 passed an ordinance, with assistance from CELDF, which prohibits fracking and establishes rights for the community and the natural environment. CELDF assisted the City of Pittsburgh, PA, to draft the first local Bill of Rights which prohibits fracking in 2010. Communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York and New Mexico have enacted similar ordinances.

Mora County joins more than 150 communities across the country which have asserted their right to local self-governance through the adoption of local laws that seek to control corporate activities within their municipality.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

Utah OKs commercial oil shale mine

(Associated Press) SALT LAKE CITY – A Utah company has cleared a final hurdle to develop the first commercial oil shale mine in the nation.

The Utah Division of Water Quality on Friday issued a groundwater permit to Red Leaf Resources, which plans to develop a shale mine on state land in the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah.

Red Leaf hopes to become the first company to extract oil in commercial amounts from shale that exists in abundance under Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Oil-shale deposits in the three states represent a potentially huge, unconventional energy resource, but the trick is turning it into oil. Oil shale is rock that contains kerogen, which must be subjected to high heat before it produces liquid.

Companies have been trying to figure out how to do that commercially in the U.S. with limited environmental effects.

Red Leaf CEO Adolph Lechtenberger said in a statement that its initial, small-scale demonstration project will produce more than 300,000 barrels of oil and “prove our clean oil shale technology works on a large scale.” The company has about 600 million barrels available under its Utah leasehold.

But environmentalists expressed skepticism, saying groundwater disturbance is just one of many environmental drawbacks posed by extraction of the Uinta Basin’s rich oil shale and tar sands resources.

The ore will be strip mined, environmentalists said, and developers will consume more resources to convert hydrocarbon pre-cursors kerogen and bitumen into liquid oil.

“They take the skin off the planet and are not putting it back. It’s going to be a moonscape,” said John Weisheit of Moab-based Living Rivers. “They are destroying the watershed, the near-surface aquifers. It’s a water system that makes the ecosystem what it is.”

State regulators believe the lands do not have much groundwater and note they are requiring Red Leaf to maintain monitoring wells to determine how the project affects the water system.

“We based our permit decision on the absence of water in the extraction process, the lack of an aquifer and low permeability of the rocks underlying the test site,” DWQ director Walt Baker told The Tribune. “We plan to keep a close eye on the project to make sure the process works as promised.”

Red Leaf also plans to develop below-grade ovens to heat the ore mined.

The company’s process “extracts oil with lower energy consumption, lower emissions, lower water use and less environmental impact than any oil shale technology deployed in the world today,” Lechtenberger said.

Environmentalists also criticized Red Leaf’s reclamation plan. “It allows them to keep the earth ovens in place and cover it with top soil,” Weisheit said.

San Juan oil drilling heats up in N.M.

An Encana Corp. rig explores for oil south of Farmington. The company has drilled about 30 wells in the area.

(SW.EF! editor’s note: read this mainstream media article with a critical lens, it contains some pro-fracking propaganda.)

Swift and Huntington explore in Colorado

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Encana Corp. plans to pour $250 million to $450 million into drilling oil wells on New Mexico’s side of the San Juan Basin next year, the company says.

The Canadian company has aggressively pursued San Juan Basin oil, drilling about 30 wells to date. The drilling is concentrated near Huerfano, N.M., southeast of Farmington.

“Our strategy really is to shift our portfolio more towards oil, so we’re really focusing on areas where we can do that, and the San Juan’s one of those,” said Doug Hock, a Denver-based spokesman for the company.

Encana plans to operate two to four drilling rigs in the area in 2014, according to a company presentation. The wells cost $4 million to $5 million each and have shown initial production rates of 400 to 500 barrels per day.

The San Juan historically has been one of the nation’s most productive natural-gas basins, but with prices low for that commodity and high for oil, drillers are finding oil in some previously overlooked areas.

Improved techniques for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” have made such drilling possible.

Oil, gas drilling delayed in Utah

From The Durango Herald (Associated Press)

SALT LAKE CITY – An independent state agency announced Friday it was putting on hold a lease for oil and gas drilling in a wild area of Utah in a concession to big-game hunters who rallied the opposition of Gov. Gary Herbert.

Sportsmen’s groups hailed the agreement between state-lands managers and Anadarko Petroleum. It delays until 2016 exploratory drilling in the 28-square-mile Bogart Canyon area of the Book Cliffs in Grand County.

The board of the Utah Trust Lands Administration voted Thursday to scale back the drilling lease for the Texas-based company. Anadarko can still sink wells on 150 square miles of more developed lands in the Book Cliffs region.

The deal gives Herbert and U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop more time to explore federal land-trade opportunities that could compensate Utah for pulling back drilling in this area, officials said Friday.

The chairman of the state-lands agency said it will “fully cooperate with Congressman Bishop’s broader consolidation effort.”

“We are anxious to see if the process can provide an exchange proposal equal to or better than the agency’s current land position in the Book Cliffs,” said agency chairman Steve Ostler, a former executive for real-estate developer The Boyer Co.

Herbert announced his opposition Aug. 27, acknowledging the trust-lands agency has a responsibility to make money for Utah schools, but “clearly, a lot of groups are upset” about the Book Cliffs lease. He suggested the agency look to a longer-term strategy of trading less developed state lands for federal preservation, while taking other mineral-rich federal lands.

Officials aggressively developed Utah’s portfolio of checkerboard lands inside federal domain in Utah with real-estate sales and oil-and-gas drilling leases. The agency manages 3.4 million acres of trust lands remaining from a statehood grant for the benefit of the schools. The trust is valued at $1.67 billion, up from $60 million in the past two decades.

Officials expressed some concern Friday that back-pedaling on oil and gas leasing could shortchange funding for Utah’s schools. For that reason, the state Board of Education has endorsed the original Anadarko lease as the best decision for public schools.

Other beneficiaries of the state trust include a hospital and school at University of Utah dedicated to mining, schools for the deaf and blind and the Utah State Hospital.