Message From the Editor

From the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota to the Mariner East complex in Pennsylvania to the Keystone XL coming down from Canada, Sharon Kelly’s been tracking developments in pipeline progress amid the pandemic that you might have missed. Catch up here.

In early March, Julie Dermansky met a family in New Mexico who have long worried about the health impacts of living so close to the fracking industry. Their fears intensified this year after an industry wastewater pipe exploded, spraying them and their livestock just before COVID-19 precautions ordered them to stay at home.

Undeterred by Congress, Trump’s Department of Energy has gone ahead with a policy to aid the oil industry, in a move that’s raising questions of both its legality and long-term chances of changing the industry’s poor financial outlook.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmogblog.com.

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

P.S. Did you know DeSmog is on Instagram? Follow us @desmogblog.

Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Some Pipeline Projects Push Forward While Others Falter Nationwide

— By Sharon Kelly (12 min. read) —

Last Friday, the Iowa Utilities Board issued an order that would allow the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to double the amount of oil that flows through the state from 550,000 barrels a day to 1.1 million barrels a day. The utilities board, which also announced it had waived a hearing on the matter, made its move over the objections of environmental organizations and other civic groups opposed to DAPL operator Energy Transfer’s expansion plans.

Iowa’s approval landed just two days after a federal judge in North Dakota found that the project must undergo a full environmental review in a March 25 order, throwing the pipeline’s legal status into question.

COVID-19 Fears Intensified for New Mexico Family Living in Fracking Industry’s Shadow

— By Julie Dermansky (10 min. read) —

Penny Aucoin and her husband Carl Dee George have worried about living near oil and gas producing sites in New Mexico's Permian Basin since the sites began springing up near their home six years ago. They have wondered what effect the industrial pollution might have on them and their son and daughter — even more so now with the COVID-19 pandemic — but with no money to pick up and relocate, they have remained in their home.

Their worries escalated early in the morning on January 21, when a pipe transporting oil field wastewater at a WPX Energy production site exploded, dousing the family, their home, and land.

Trump Admin Bypasses Congress, Offers Backup Storage to Boost Troubled Oil Industry

— By Dana Drugmand (10 min. read) —

After Congress declined to allocate $3 billion of the recent economic stimulus package to fill the government’s emergency stockpile of oil, the Trump administration has taken its own steps to provide short-term relief to the U.S. petroleum sector.

The Department of Energy announced last week it would be making arrangements to immediately store 30 million barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a backup reserve created in the 1970s as a buffer against oil supply disruptions. Now, instead of supply shortages, oil markets are facing what consulting firm Rystad Energy is calling “one of the biggest oil supply gluts the world has ever seen.”

Workers and Climate Must Be Priority in Aviation Industry Bailouts, Campaigners Say

— By Jocelyn Timperley (5 min. read) —

Any public money used to bailout airlines must ensure that workers and the climate are put first, says an open letter backed by over 250 organisations in 25 countries.

The campaign, launched yesterday by the Stay Grounded network, is urging governments to avoid rushing into bailouts which lack social and environmental conditions or proper protection for workers.

Oil-by-Rail Volumes Decreasing While Risks Remain

— By Justin Mikulka (7 min. read) —

There are only two things that have made any real difference in protecting the public from the dangers of oil trains: activism that has stopped new infrastructure, and low oil prices. While activism is currently on hold during the pandemic, impacts on oil prices abound.

The latest numbers show that U.S. oil-by-rail volumes are down 11 percent versus where they were a year ago, which is likely just the beginning of the decline in volumes.

For Trump’s EPA, Back to Normal Means More Pollution

— By Judith Lewis Mernit, Capital & Main (6 min. read) —

If you, like me, tote an albuterol inhaler throughout your city’s smoggy summers and inversioned winters, you might have noticed an ironic, upbeat side effect of the nation’s mass grounding: It’s noticeably easier to breathe. It’s also easier, in this time when many of us have nowhere to go, to get to places. Traffic maps of typically congested U.S. cities show ribbons of green from one sunrise to the next: Rush hours have evaporated; sig alerts — a regular feature for California commuters — are suddenly rare.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Fred Singer

S. Fred Singer was a former space scientist and government scientific administrator who founded the Science & Environmental Policy Project, a nonprofit “educational group” focusing on global warming denial. According to leaked documents, in 2012 Singer had been receiving $5,000 a month from the climate science denial group the Heartland Institute. With the help of Craig Idso, Singer helped develop the Heartland Institute's “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” an initiative that mirrors the name and look of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body of thousands of climate scientists who assemble comprehensive assessments on climate change. Singer recently passed away at 95.

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database or our new Koch Network Database.