Guest post by David Middleton
The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Thursday, arguing that the company is violating several key water regulations at one of their Boston storage and transfer locations.
The site in question — located in the Boston suburb of Everett, Massachusetts — is a sprawling, 110-acre terminal that extends to the bank of the Mystic River. The complaint alleges that the terminal has released toxic pollutants into the water for years, and that the company has failed to make improvements to the terminal to strengthen it against the risks of climate change — violating both the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
“This is a stunning example of how ExxonMobil’s climate deceit hits home, where their repeated sworn, but false, statements to regulators that this facility was prepared for climate conditions put the surrounding communities that have hosted the facility for years in danger,” Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, told ThinkProgress.
According to investigative reports published last year by both InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, ExxonMobil’s internal scientists knew about the role of fossil fuels in driving global warming as early as 1977, and yet publicly continued to fuel doubt about climate science.
Exxon also built oil rigs in the North Sea to withstand projected climate impacts like sea level rise and rising temperatures.
Yet the company failed to make the same structural improvements to its terminal in Massachusetts, the lawsuit claims, leaving surrounding communities at risk of toxic pollution during severe storm events or floods. According to the complaint, the Everett Terminal is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change predicted to hit New England in the coming years: sea level rise, increased precipitation, increased magnitude and frequency of storm events, and increased magnitude and frequency of storm surges.
“All of the available modeling shows that… {blah, blah, blah}
[…]
If ExxonMobil’s storage and transfer facility is in violation of tht Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the EPA or Massachusetts State regulators might just have noticed it. If the regulators missed the violations, and this environmental terrorist activist group can make their case in court, ExxonMobil will have to correct the violations and pay for any actual damages. However, the connection of this to climate change and the moronic #ExxonKnew crackhead conspiracy theory is mindbogglingly stupid.
This bit of total ignorance defies description:
Exxon also built oil rigs in the North Sea to withstand projected climate impacts like sea level rise and rising temperatures.
Yet the company failed to make the same structural improvements to its terminal in Massachusetts, the lawsuit claims…
Now, I am probably going out on a limb to assume that these dimwits actually mean “oil rigs” when they say “oil rigs”… However, ExxonMobil doesn’t build oil rigs. They contract rigs from companies like Noble Drilling, who paid companies like National Oilwell to build them. Offshore drilling rigs are designed to survive the weather.
The oil rigs that drilled wells in the North Sea were capable of drilling all over the world. Half the rigs that were in the Gulf of Mexico 10 years ago have moved overseas, mostly to the Middle East and Africa. The rigs are capable of working year-round. Offshore oil rigs don’t notice 0.0035 °C per year of rising temperatures and 3 mm per year of sea level rise. However, they do notice hurricanes, which occasionally sink them.
Oil rigs are designed to operate in specific water depth ranges.
What happens to an oil rig if sea level rises by 1 foot?
You add 1 foot to the Kelly Bushing (KB). I’ve been working the Gulf of Mexico since 1988. To my knowledge, climate change has not forced us to revise the KB’s of any well ever drilled in the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the raging catastrophic rise in sea level since Al Gore invented the Internet and global warming, jackup, semi-submersible and drill ship rigs are still drilling in the same places they were 30 years ago. Since they are capable of operating in winter, spring, summer and fall, from the North Sea to West Africa to the Middle East to Southeast Asia to the Gulf of Mexico, they did not have to be specially designed to fend off climate change.
The #ExxonKnew Crackhead Conspiracy Theory… ad nauseum
According to the complaint, the Everett Terminal is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change predicted to hit New England in the coming years: sea level rise, increased precipitation, increased magnitude and frequency of storm events, and increased magnitude and frequency of storm surges.
“All of the available modeling shows that… {blah, blah, blah}
ExxonMobil is apparently being sued on the basis of future damages predicted by models which have demonstrated no predictive skill over the past 30 years. Good luck with that strategy. Last I checked, legal standing required evidence of actual damages.
Who are the Conservation Law Foundation
Apparently they are a group of attorneys with an affinity for freezing in the dark.
Who is Think Progress?
The short answer is the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The long answer is:
The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. According to CAP, the center is “dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action.”[2] The Center presents a liberal[3] viewpoint on economic issues. It has its headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The president and chief executive officer of CAP is Neera Tanden, who worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations and for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.[4] The first president and CEO was John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to then U.S. President Bill Clinton, and is currently serving as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Director.[5] Podesta remained with the organization as chairman of the board until he joined the Obama White House staff in December 2013. Tom Daschle is the current chairman.[6]
The Center for American Progress runs a campus outreach group, Generation Progress, and a sister advocacy organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Citing Podesta’s influence in the formation of the Obama Administration, a November 2008 article in Time stated that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan‘s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway”.[7]
For further reference:
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part 1)
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part Deux, “Same as it ever was.”)
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part 3, Exxon: The Fork Not Taken
“Smoke & Fumes”… The dumbest attack on ExxonMobil evah’
Should just go to court and establish a plan for 3mm/year.
In response to this, I would like to see an investigation into who proposed the environmental measures which led to the devastating British floods of a few years back, and who their backers are.
Who knows, but exposure of what actually went on there might even be a ‘game over’ moment for the AGW movement, in terms of loss of public support.
The history of filling in Boston Harbor is interesting:
Click on the link to: LandFill Sequence
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/bos_fill2.html
Reply to asybot September 30, 2016 at 11:49 am
Back in the day, JFK was fooling around with everything in a skirt, and Bill Clinton ends up looking almost like a saint in comparison. But there was no internet in the 1960’s, and the MSM lapdogs kowtowed to the elite and kept quiet, but no more. Shutting down opposing voices and setting up “information gatekeepers” will probably be the first item on the Clinton agenda… http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2014/04/19/clinton-wh-feared-internet-s-ability-to-democraticize-news-three-years-before-drudge-bombshell/
When Matt Drudge hit the scene, Hillary was bemoaning the lack of “gatekeepers”. The MSM lapdogs at Newsweek had killed their story about Clinton and Lewinsky. But an uppity store clerk by the name of Matt Drudge broke the story… http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1491134/posts
And the latest is the Clinton’s campaign claim that Breitbart.com has no right to exist… http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/18/hillary-campaign-vows-to-destroy-opposition-website/
Once upon a time I was a mud-logger on a semi-submersible rig, out in the Atlantic north-west of Shetland, in about 1000′ of water. We had weather not unlike that shown in the clips. The marine riser (big fat pipe that brings the drilling mud back up to the rig) had a slip joint in it that could cope with close to 30′ of travel. The semi-submersible rigs were held in place by 8 anchors, so they don’t move like a ship. The movement is heavily damped. It could get a bit scary when you were pitched down into the on-coming wave, but it never got to the point where we had to abandon drilling.
Any ‘lawyer’ who asserts that a marine drilling rig of any sort is (negligently) unable to cope with the sort of sea-level rise that is actually happening is a fool, who will soon be unemployed and broke.
3mm/year vs 30m waves ? No contest.
“Tom Daschle is the current chairman.” Ahh. Figures. Mr. “I’m a conservative in South Dakota but a liberal in DC” former senator has moved on from helping orchestrate Obamacare to organizing lawfare against the Climate Change cult’s latest bogeyman. One of my happiest moments in the last 15 years was when he got the boot from the Senate.
Sounds like the department of pre crime, a fantasy land just for lawyers.
Like so many things this election cycle, it’s all about making the original “report” headlines. This seems to fit into the same box of tomfoolery that Howard Dean’s claim that one of the Presidential candidates is a cocaine user (he guesses when asked for proof). Imho, SLAPP may not apply here but Exxon should seek dismissal and sanctions against them plus submit complaints to the Bars the attorneys are licensed.
Skeptics should be welcoming this. A lot of “oil” people here, including the author, have pointed out that rigs are designed to handle more than a tiny bit of sea-level rise. I agree with many here though, that it would be excellent if this did go to litigation. For a start, it would be very interesting for the court to examine whether there is any proof at all that warming leads to increased weather systems, storminess, drought or flood. Even the IPCC admits that there is no evidence for that to date. There is also quite a bit of evidence to the contrary (historic low number of landfall hurricanes in the US, decreased ACE over the last 30 years). Secondly, it would be excellent for the court to try to establish, with regard to the coastal facility involved in this, how much storm surge or etc might relate to sealevel rise, in comparison to historical events. This would allow exposure of the moderate sealevel rise noted by tide guages versus the “corrected” satellite number. It would also be interesting to show that there has been no acceleration of sealevel rise in the period that may have been affected by CO2 increases. It would then be excellent for the court to come to a conclusion as to whether any of these effects are due to CO2, or natural variability. So I say, bring on the court case. This looks like a massive own goal on the part of the warmist camp.
How far above high tide is the facility? Rivers *fall* to the sea, so the bulk of it
is presumably at least several metres above high tide, so *is* there any risk
from sea level rise in say the next 200 years?