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Introduction to the Oil Industry Helena Paul (Oilwatch) I want to start from the point of view that we have to end the oil industry, and that is not the only thing that we have to end. For a start, it’s an incredibly inefficient way of using a resource. I’ve talked to indigenous people who say these things shouldn’t come out of the ground because as soon as they do they upset absolutely every kind of relationship within the biosphere. So leave them where they are. At every single point of their use and abuse they cause pollution, unacceptable pollution, to land, to water, to air. And of course this is partly a result of the inefficiency of the whole process, that it has got enormous amounts of entropy or waste built into it. The oil industry is the lifeblood for the development paradigm that we are living with at the moment, which is based on a kind of linear science which just doesn’t bear any resemblance to nature, to how nature operates. It is based on asset-stripping, it’s based on converting natural capital to financial capital, which doesn’t really exist. You are converting something real to something unreal. Instead of getting something for nothing - everyone loves a bargain - you are getting nothing for something. So it just doesn’t make any sense and we can’t afford it any longer. When you first go to look for oil, the first thing that companies generally do is seismic testing. Seismic testing means that you cut lines in the ground, in my particular experience, in forests. Every kilometre you make a grid like a chequered tablecloth and within every square of every grid you make a helipad, so that you can bring your men in to do their work. In places where no-one is looking they tend to cut lines about 3 metres wide, which divides the forest canopy, which cuts canopy animals off, and confines them in squares, and which does all sorts of other things which have tremendous effects on the ecosystem, ie opening up the canopy, opening it up to fires, providing ways in for colonists - even if there isn’t a road people can walk up a seismic line. Also in the past, and probably still now, while no-one’s looking they cut down big trees if they’re in the way of the seismic sitings. Then they put dynamite in shot holes every 50m-100m and they explode that dynamite in order to get a picture of the underlying strata. Well you can imagine what that does to animals, and to people whose hearing is far more sensitive than our own. When they have finished that job they will then decide where to make exploratory wells, and they have to bring in a drilling rig which will usually work night and day for months - more noise pollution. They use drilling muds which are often full of extremely dangerous substances - arsenic, lead, bactericides, anti-corrosives, detergents, and then by the time they have drilled down and come up they have also got crude oil mixed with all that. They then have to get rid of all that stuff. Supposedly they work on cleaning it up. Very often they will have a big pool next to the well-head where they put all the muck. When it rains, oil floats, so it comes up and out and flows into the ecosystem, and that happens all over the place. In Ecuador, I have seen it many many times and have a few pictures if anyone wants to look at them later. And then maybe when they have found out if there is some oil there, then they will go into production which means building pipelines. Also, at this stage, even if they have said that they don’t need to build any roads before, de facto they are building roads because people in Ecuador use the pipeline as a main road, it is easier to walk along than most other things in the vicinity, and anyway they have to be able to get to the pipeline in case it breaks. In Ecuador, which is heavily prone to earthquakes, as most of South America is, the pipeline is broken with monotonous regularity, spilling vast quantities of oil into the ecosystem. Although I have been told by oil engineers confidentially that that is nothing compared to the day to day neglect of oil just dripping out of installations and percolating into the groundwater. Another thing is production water - production water is full of all the chemicals that oil has in it and often it is just allowed to flow into the natural environment. It is often very hot, it’s full of toxics, sometimes they reinject it into the strata and it will then help to push up the oil when the reservoir gets empty. Then there is gas. Gas comes up anyway with the oil, and for years and years, as people working in Nigeria know, they burn the gas - 30 years the same gas flare will have been burning. Some of the brightest lights you can see from satellites above the earth are oil flares. I am not very good on figures - other people may have figures for the climate forcing aspects of all this. So, that is a very brief outline of exploration and production on that side. The impacts - I have talked very briefly about the environmental impacts on soil, water and forests, which I know most about, but any ecosystem is going to be impacted. But then there are the social impacts which are much more difficult to quantify. When these people go in, the cultures that they meet they have no respect for. They can’t have a respect for them basically - they believe the bottom line is we want to eradicate poverty - this is the line one hears endlessly - and improve these people’s way of life, they need to be developed, and so on and so forth. No respect for their way of life, their universe, their language, their culture. That can just go, because of course what we have - Coca Cola, oil , baseball hats - is much better than what they have. So, when people talk about consultation with communities it is almost a meaningless concept because they can’t know what they are up against, and the people who are talking to them don’t respect them. I don’t know whether that leaves you with a consultation process. So that is very briefly some of the impacts from the exploitation of oil.
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