Category: Climate Chaos

16.10.2009
BP’s flag­ship annu­al recruit­ment event at Oxford’s Ran­dolph Hotel was dis­rupt­ed last night when mem­bers of the audi­ence jumped on the stage and took over the event. Around 20 cam­paign­ers tar­get­ed the 6.30pm event in protest at the com­pa­ny’s recent deci­sion to extract oil from Canada’s Tar Sands.

The cam­paign­ers stole the stage from Peter Math­er, Head of BP UK, and gave a pre­sen­ta­tion of their own, which high­light­ed the fact that in recent months the oil giant has dropped the pre­tence of hav­ing moved ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’, slash­ing its renew­ables bud­get and clos­ing down its alter­na­tive ener­gy divi­sion. BP were accused of get­ting involved not just in ‘dirty oil’, but ‘bloody oil’ due to the dev­as­tat­ing effect Tar Sands oil extrac­tion is hav­ing on the envi­ron­ment and local indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties. [1]

The pre­sen­ta­tion revealed that:

“There is no clear­er demon­stra­tion of BP’s deter­mi­na­tion to ignore the risks of cli­mate change than their deci­sion to invest in Canada’s Tar Sands. Extract­ing oil from these sludgy deposits pro­duces three to five times as much green­house gas as con­ven­tion­al oil…The Tar Sands are the biggest indus­tri­al devel­op­ment in the world, are the fastest source of defor­esta­tion and have left a hole the size of Flori­da in the Cana­di­an wilder­ness. Every day, the extrac­tion process uses enough gas to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes for an entire year. The lakes of tox­ic waste sludge it pro­duces are vis­i­ble from space, and are leach­ing into local water sup­plies, caus­ing high rates of rare can­cers in indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties near­by.” [2]

Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, the ques­tion and answer ses­sion was dom­i­nat­ed by the activists in the audi­ence, trans­form­ing BP’s cosy recruit­ment event into a major pub­lic grilling on cli­mate change and Tar Sands. For the final half hour of the event, the cam­paign­ers answered stu­dents’ ques­tions about BP’s envi­ron­men­tal record over wine and canapes pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny.

The cam­paign­ers, Oxford stu­dents sup­port­ed by local group Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action [3], also unfurled a ban­ner that read “BP: Bloody Oil” out­side of the Ran­dolph Hotel, hand­ed out leaflets about the Tar Sands, and cor­nered senior BP staff for detailed one-on-one ques­tion­ing at the end of the event.

Chris­tine Ash­worth, 19, said “With 300,000 peo­ple a year dying from the effects of cli­mate change, I’m appalled that BP are not only mak­ing this prob­lem worse, but they’re tram­pling over the rights of indige­nous peo­ple as they do it. I encour­age stu­dents from all uni­ver­si­ties where BP are recruit­ing to take action to stop the com­pa­ny extract­ing oil from the Tar Sands.”

Lau­ra Doughty, a local stu­dent, said “We were there to impress upon stu­dents that there are only two pos­si­ble out­comes of tak­ing a job with BP. Either we suc­ceed in tack­ling cli­mate change by rapid­ly phas­ing out fos­sil fuels, which means your job will quick­ly become obso­lete, or else we fail to stop cli­mate dis­as­ter, in which case you will be part­ly respon­si­ble for the loss of hun­dreds of mil­lions of lives, homes and liveli­hoods. There are green jobs out there, but they aren’t at BP – 98% of their busi­ness is oil and gas!”

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

[1] BP pur­chased a sig­nif­i­cant stake in the Tar Sands oper­a­tions in 2007. See:
http://www.ienearth.org/cits and http://dirtyoilsands.org
BP’s involve­ment in the Alber­ta Tar Sands was high­light­ed at the Camp for Cli­mate Action in Lon­don this sum­mer, which includ­ed a protest out­side the Lon­don head­quar­ters of BP.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8232522.stm
[2] The full text of the pre­sen­ta­tion is copied below
[3] http://tvca.ox4.org/

THE PRESENTATION

BP are here today to sell them­selves as a cut­ting edge com­pa­ny who have the right response to deal with our ener­gy needs in the face of cli­mate change. We’re from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action and we believe the poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences of cli­mate change put a huge ques­tion mark over our future. Many of you will share our con­cerns and we hope you’ll make an informed choice about whether BP real­ly do have what it takes to take us into the future.

Cli­mate change is the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing human­i­ty today. A few years ago, BP appeared to acknowl­edge this with a 600 mil­lion dol­lar green rebrand­ing oper­a­tion. But despite this rebrand, 98% of their busi­ness remained in oil and gas. Then in June this year, the “Beyond Petroluem” pre­tence was final­ly dropped when they slashed their renew­ables bud­get by half a bil­lion pounds, closed down their alter­na­tive ener­gy divi­sion – prompt­ing its direc­tor to resign – and decid­ed to invest in the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel source on Earth – the Cana­di­an Tar Sands. More about that in a moment.

Oxford University’s Envi­ron­men­tal Change Insti­tute reports that to keep atmos­pher­ic CO2 con­cen­tra­tion at a safe lev­el, we can only afford to burn 20% of the fos­sil fuels we know about, and we cer­tain­ly can’t afford to go look­ing for any more.

So if BP is ask­ing where they can find more oil or how to make extrac­tion tech­niques more viable and cost-effec­tive, then they are ask­ing the wrong ques­tion. The real ques­tion is: how can we
decar­bonise the ener­gy sec­tor in the next 20 years, in line with the rec­om­men­da­tions of the government’s inde­pen­dent Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change.
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Let’s just remind our­selves of what’s at stake here:

Accord­ing to the Kofi Annan’s Glob­al Human­i­tar­i­an Forum 300,000 peo­ple a year are already dying from the effects of cli­mate change. Advanc­ing deserts and flood­ing caused by sea lev­el ris­es could lead to the loss of a third of the world’s fer­tile land with­in your life­time, result­ing food riots, mass star­va­tion, drought and water short­age beyond any­thing we have seen so far.

It has the poten­tial to dwarf the death count of all the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s wars, and pro­duce 250 mil­lion cli­mate refugees by the mid­dle of the cen­tu­ry. And more wars can be expect­ed to result from the rush for resources like land and food in a deficit world. Mean­while, a third of all species could be com­mit­ted to extinc­tion.

Cli­mate change needs to be seen as the great­est moral issue of our age, and ener­gy com­pa­nies are major play­ers who have a seri­ous respon­si­bil­i­ty to address this — uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly and imme­di­ate­ly. As the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels results in CO2, there is a direct link between BP and the great­est prob­lem humankind has ever faced. Cli­mate change urgency has sparked a pro­lif­er­a­tion of eth­i­cal promis­es, but in BP’s case this has been lit­tle more than a PR tool to legit­imise their con­tin­ued prof­it from fos­sil fuels. Accord­ing to the UN, the UK is respon­si­ble for 2.6% of glob­al green­house gas emis­sions. BP is respon­si­ble for 5.6%.
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There is no clear­er demon­stra­tion of BP’s deter­mi­na­tion to ignore the risks of cli­mate change than their deci­sion to invest in Canada’s Tar Sands. As con­ven­tion­al oil starts to run dry, com­pa­nies like BP are scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel by pur­su­ing impure, hard-to-reach and even more pol­lut­ing sources like the Tar Sands. Extract­ing oil from these sludgy deposits in the heart of Canada’s ancient forests pro­duces three to five times as much green­house gas as con­ven­tion­al oil. Tar Sands devel­op­ment is turn­ing once pris­tine stretch­es of for­est into des­o­late, post-apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scapes and pro­duc­ing tox­ic pol­lu­tion that is harm­ing the health and qual­i­ty of life of the region’s indige­nous First Nation com­mu­ni­ties. The Tar Sands are the biggest indus­tri­al devel­op­ment in the world, are the fastest source of defor­esta­tion and have left a hole the size of Flori­da in the Cana­di­an wilder­ness. Every day, the extrac­tion process uses enough gas to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes for an entire year. Yes, a year’s worth of gas for 3.2 mil­lion homes, every sin­gle day. The lakes of tox­ic waste sludge it pro­duces are vis­i­ble from space, and are leach­ing into local water sup­plies, caus­ing high rates of rare can­cers in indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties near­by. Let me read you a quote from George Poitras, the for­mer chief of the near­by Fort Chipewyan com­mu­ni­ty: “We are con­vinced that these can­cers are linked to the Tar Sands devel­op­ment on our doorstep. It is short­en­ing our lives. That’s why we no longer call it ‘dirty oil’ but ‘bloody oil’. The blood of Fort Chipewyan peo­ple is on these com­pa­nies’ hands.”

This is what BP mean when they say they are invest­ing in “alter­na­tive ener­gy”. I think it’s safe to say they’ve gone Back to Petro­le­um – in fact, they’ve gone fur­ther, into Bloody Petro­le­um.
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And it’s not just the Tar Sands: BP’s petro­le­um extrac­tion is asso­ci­at­ed with pover­ty, mil­i­ta­riza­tion and local envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion all around the world. Human Rights Watch details spe­cif­ic prob­lems around BP’s oper­a­tions in the Baku-Tbil­isi-Cey­han pipeline and in Indone­sia. In Alas­ka BP has been fined for fraud and envi­ron­men­tal crimes relat­ing to oil spills. BP has no com­punc­tion
about lend­ing legit­i­ma­cy to the Indone­sian occu­pa­tion in West Papua, where human rights groups esti­mate 100,000 have been killed by gov­ern­ment forces. A large body of evi­dence has linked BP to the mur­der of Colom­bian trade union­ists. How­ev­er much BP may claim to be a “good” oil com­pa­ny, their prof­its from oil extrac­tion are inevitably at the expense of local pop­u­la­tions. If you are think­ing about work­ing for BP, you’ll have to con­sid­er whether such human rights abus­es are some­thing you want to be asso­ci­at­ed with.
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Oil was piv­otal to our post-indus­tri­al devel­op­ment. It has shaped our his­to­ry. But oil has had its day. The sim­ple fact is that in the face of cur­rent prob­lems we can no longer keep burn­ing fos­sil fuels – and the world is wak­ing up to this.

As grad­u­ates with a top qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion, you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be at the fore­front of where we go next with our plan­et. If you want a career in ener­gy, that’s great. But is BP real­ly where you want to be? There are excit­ing up and com­ing com­pa­nies out there with the emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that can real­ly build our future. A career in oil and gas is a dead end. BP have gone Back to Petro­le­um, which means that BP Belongs in the Past.

Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action
oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://tvca.ox4.org