TagExxonMobil

ExxonMobil up to its old dirty tricks in New Jersey

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ExxonMobil is arguably the world’s most powerful corporation, with annual revenues greater than many developing nations and a penchant for CIA-grade secrecy. It’s headquartered in a fortress-style building just outside of Dallas that some employees jokingly call “the Death Star.” But if you remember “Star Wars,” you know that even “the Death Star”...

Crude Justice — the story of a lifetime fighting Big Oil, and winning

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The story of my new book — Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America — begins with a phone call. Sometimes one call can change your life – maybe even change the world a little bit. In 1989, I was a young lawyer just a few years out of Loyola Law School. I’d already left one button-down law firm to work as a...

How much proof do we need on fracking and earthquakes?

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Remember a few weeks ago, when I wrote about earthquakes in Irving, Texas — a stone’s throw from the headquarters of the world’s largest energy company, ExxonMobil? I thought the irony was huge: Texas is just one corner of America where earthquakes had once been rare but are now commonplace — coinciding with the rise of fracking in those regions. Here’s the thing:...

The hypocrisy of Big Oil is collapsing, from Baton Rouge to Dallas

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There’s been some stunning developments this week in the fight against Big Oil — one of them right here in Louisiana. It was just last year that an epic expose in Harper’s magazine pulled the lid off some of the undue, outsized influence that the oil industry holds here in our Sportsmen’s Paradise, and a key element was the clout that the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association...

Leaking pipelines or exploding rail cars — choose your Big Oil poison

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There’s one thing that’s clear — when it comes to North America’s recent oil and gas boom, there’s no way that the average citizen can win. That’s especially true when it comes to the critical issue of how to transport those millions of barrels of oil and natural gas that are now being produced from the Canadian tar sands, from underneath the North Dakota...

As pipeline spills get worse, regulators are in bed with Big Oil

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The website Midwest Energy News asks a very good question: When a ruptured pipeline spilled 20,000 barrels of oil into a North Dakota wheat field last month, a state health official said it was “the best place it could’ve occurred” — far from population centers and water supplies. But what if a similar spill occurs in the worst place? For better or worse, the year 2013 will be remembered as the...

BP hasn’t learned from mistakes, plans risky Arctic venture

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Will BP ever learn? I’m beginning to think the answer is ‘no.’ The company is back in federal court in New Orleans this week, for the next phase of determining how much oil actually spilled in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident, and BP’s level of negligence. The U.S. government is trying to show that the British oil giant should pay as much as $17.5 billion in pollution...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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