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| Camisea pipe slashes through forest |
The main Camisea pipeline is described by Amazon Watch as the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin, causing clear cutting of forest, major spills and displacement of native people. ERM performed the environmental assessment for an arm of the World Bank which finances development projects in what was once termed 'the third world'. The review it conducted lasted from September 2006 until January 2008 and was allegedly developed using "industry best practices". Camisea I was itself a disaster built with corroded pipe left over from Brazilian and Ecuadorian projects and welded together by untrained workers. It exploded five times in the first 15 months of existence. The spills polluted forest, killed hundreds of fish, and burned hundreds of acres of rainforest and cropland. The approximately 10,000 people living near the developement are also suffering social degradation. Camisea development has brought more river and air traffic to the remote lower Urubamba region which scares away game indigenous people hunt. Their water and food supplies are contaminated. Infectious diseases including syphilis have increased. The review conducted by ERM for Camisea II did not even mention the exploding pipeline to which it and LNG terminal would be connected. So much for pipeline co-owner Ray Hunt's boast that Camisea development will " benefit every citizen of this great country and help establish the Republic of Peru as a stable and responsible leader..." Hunt helped bribe the government to change the country's hydrocarbon law restricting exports based on domestic needs. Fifty-four million acres of the world's largest terrestrial carbon sink have been targeted for fossil fuel development by Peru.
ERM group is described as a key node in the worldwide "carbon web", a network of business relationships between oil and gas companies, banks, and the government agencies supposedly regulating them. The consulting firm's modus operandi is to use the "tobacco tactic": coordinated propaganda campaigns employing faux science to transform one-sided propositions into a farcical dispute between two sides. Enter the US State Department into the web of maintaining carbon dependency. ERM is under contract with pipeline builder TransCanada. Other clients of ERM include Koch Industries, Conoco-Phillips, and British Petroleum. In fact ERM's second in command has worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada as an outside consultant.ERM had to certify to State it was not operating under any conflicts of interest before being hired to perform the Keystone SEIS. When Mother Jones unearthed ERM's profitable connections to big oil, State responded by redacting the curriculum vitae of ERM officers.
B. O'Drama is unfazed by business as usual in the hydrocarbon swamp of Washington, DC. Nor is he paying attention to the "urgent clock" of fossil fueled climate change that Senator Kerry talked about six years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations. He implied to rich supporters at the home of a San Francisco fundraiser that the Keystone Pipeline (XL for extended line, not extra large) will go ahead because "the politics of this [project] are tough", and "earth's temperature probably isn't the number one concern for workers..." Absolute hogwash from a southside Chicago huckster who presents the same false choice between the economy and the environment as the proponents of the project. Ask the evacuees of Mayflower, AK if their priorities are being served by yet another spill of corrosive, acidic, toxic and potentially flammable dilbit* [video]. Leadership is a lot about taking policy stands that are widely unpopular, but later prove to be beneficial for everyone on the planet.
*dilbitis more acidic, thick, and sulfuric than conventional crude oil; is up to seventry times more viscous than concentional crudes; contains fifteen to twenty times higher acid concentrations than conventional crudes and five to ten times as much sulfur as conventional crudes, and the additional sulfur can lead to the weakening or embrittlement of pipelines. Expert Anthony Swift's testimony to House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.