The war against Fracking: The Sky is Pink

Fracking, injecting chemicals in to rock causing it to fracture and release the oil contained in it is coming up against increased opposition. The important lesson here is that we cannot simply oppose it and leave it there. It raises the need for alternative energy sources and this will not happen in any serious way without taking energy production out of private hands. More about fracking in a previous blog.
 

Speculators, thieves and frackers descend on North Dakota Reservation

Fort Berthold is an Indian Reservation in North Dakota, home to 12,000 people, members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikari Nation collectively referred to as the Three Affiliated Tribes.  There has been a revolution of sorts on this reservation which was created in 1870, it has oil, and lots of it.The Bakken oilfield includes the Reservation and western North Dakota as well as  Eastern Montana and southern Sasketchewan. It is the largest contiguous oil field discovery in US history according to the  US Geological Survey.

Less than five years ago there were no producing oil wells on Fort Berthold according to Bloomberg Businessweek, today there are 297.  The Bakken has over 7000 producing wells in total.  With such a discovery, the vulture capitalists, speculators, coupon clippers and other social wasters have descended on the region.  But this discovery has also created tremendous problems for these small communities and the Indian people on the Reservation.  Terri Hansen of Indian Country writes:

"It has also brought a huge increase in traffic accidents, while services at the tiny hospital are limited. The industrialization and population boom has strained water supplies, sewage systems, and federal, state and tribal governmental services in the area, as NPR has reported. Exponentially increased amounts of dust drift across deteriorating roadways. Jobs are plentiful and high paying, but there’s housing shortage, and most of what’s there is makeshift. The once quiet one-bar town of Williston has had an influx of prostitutes, while a thinly stretched police force must now regularly quell once nonexistent bar fights, according to the documentary Faces of the Oil Patch."

Fracking which is a method of separating oil from rock by injecting chemicals in to the rock in order to release it has produced numerous complaints of water pollution in the area.  Fracking has been blamed for poisoning water supplies throughout the nation. But the discovery has also set Reservation occupants against each other, those who own land and those that don't.  It is the same old story, one lawsuit tribal members have against the federal government states, "....the misappropriation of land resources belonging to Native Americans.".

Oil drilling has brought in more than $500 million in the last 4 years according to Bloomberg yet the Reservation has no major hospital and the nearest emergency facility is 100 miles away.  In the other small towns outside the reservation the boom has also disrupted everyday life increasing congestion. There is a major housing shortage as the population has grown considerably, and crime and prostitution has risen considerably. The infrastructure of these communities, sewage, water, medical needs, cannot keep pace with the influx of humanity and the changes this brings.

Leaving aside whether oil drilling or fracking should be allowed, what we are witnessing here is a market boom.  The scramble for profits shows no mercy for human communities or the earth that provides us with food and water.  In capitalist society, the natural world, like human beings, is simply something to be exploited, a source of surplus value. The market has its own pace, there is no planning in such ventures. It's not just greed in the abstract, it's the way the capitalist mode of production works. Rational planning of production takes time and the involvement of all concerned, capital detests such barriers.  Like the cattle it takes to market, the quicker they get fat the better no matter what you have to pump in to them.

Here we are talking about the production of energy.  Whether it is the best and most efficient form of energy, or the most efficient form of producing it in harmony with the natural world and human society,  matters not.  What the forces behind the boom seek is surplus value, profits. 

The production of society's energy needs, just like the production of our food, our housing, our necessities of life, cannot be left to their precious market.  What the US government will encourage in Fort Berthold is those among the tribal leadership who support this view and want to profit from it. Tex Hall, the Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes is also owner of numerous oil industry related businesses and supports drilling; he's an entrepreneur, the epitome of capitalist success.

If you want to know more about what some residents of the Reservation are doing to get their story out and/or would like to contribute to the documentary the woman in the video above is talking about, you can visit this site http://www.indiegogo.com/7-Oil-1

BP pays $4.5 billion. It won't save us from ecological disasters.

We can stop this

AP reports today that BP will pay the US government $4.5 billion as a settlement for the explosion on its Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that released 280 million gallons of oil, spilling an estimated (a very broad estimate) 172 million gallons directly in to the Gulf. Oh, yes, the accident that was not an accident as it was preventable, killed eleven workers as well.

 

 The Associated Press report also other details on the effect of the spill:

"WILDLIFE
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials documented 6,104 dead birds, 609 dead sea turtles and 100 dead mammals, including dolphins, from the impacted area. Experts also collected 456 living sea turtles and 2,079 birds that were visibly oiled."

"ECOSYSTEM
The oil soiled sensitive tidal estuaries and beaches, severely affecting the edges of saltwater and brackish marshes. Sand beaches, barrier islands, tidal mud flats and mangrove stands in five coastal states were damaged."

ECONOMY
Sullied waters and health concerns shut down commercial fishing in the region for months, putting thousands of shrimpers and fishermen out of work. Charter captains, property owners, environmental groups, restaurants, hotels and other tourism businesses all claimed they suffered economic losses after the spill.
RESPONSE AND CLEANUP
At the peak of the crisis, the response effort involved 48,200 people, 9,700 vessels and 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants. The Coast Guard helped burn 265,450 barrels of oil using controlled fires."

For the deaths of the workers, two BP well-site leaders have been charged with manslaughter and a BP executive has been indicted on charges he lied to authorities. Naughty boys, all three of you.
 

What is not know is what we can't see.  One doesn't have to be an environmental scientist, a marine biologist of sorts, to know that the effects of this major catastrophe are horrific and many will not be know until they are manifested over time.  The effects on Bluefin Tuna and other oceanic life that spawns there cannot be immediately determined.  Perhaps, Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Jonson will come up with a dissoluble pill that they will convince us will make the area pristine again. 

The fact is, that the oil that was picked up is just the tip of the iceberg.  The ocean floor is full of it you can bet your bottom dollar on that.  The cancers and diseases that are a by product of these activities will emerge more prominently over time.   Perhaps the oil residue will mix with the nuclear waste from Fukushima and the ill effects will cancel each other out.  And the dispersants?  What affect do these have on the environment.

Society's Energy needs, like all social production under capitalism, is in private hands and set in to motion on the basis of profit, for the welfare of those private individuals that own the machinery, technology and human labor power that make it happen. This is the cause of these crises and the only solution is collective ownership of energy production and a plan of production developed by workers, consumers, scientists and all those whose knowledge can benefit society as a whole
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For hundreds of years the damage from this market catastrophe will continue to haunt future generations assuming the planet is still habitable for humans by then.  Fines won't stop these environmental catastrophes like the BP spill and Fukishima. They are market driven disasters, a by-product of the capitalist system.

A democratic socialist society, a world federation of democratic socialist states and a planned and rational system of production based on human need and not private gain is the only solution to ecological Armageddon.