South Texas Big Business Working Group for Making Lots of Money and Fucking Up the Earth hosts 2013 "Don't Be Like Us Awards"
The holiday season is upon us. Many look forward all year to bundling up in the cooler temperatures, cozy gatherings with family and friends, and sham awards ceremonies where nefarious industry representatives pat themselves on the back for things they could have done much worse in the previous year. Not wanting to miss out on the contrived celebrations, the recently formed South Texas Big Business Working Group for Making Lots of Money and Fucking Up the Earth (STBBWGMLMFUE) hosted their 2013 inaugural “Don’t Be Like Us Awards.” Impressed by the brazenness of the totally serious 2013 “Eagle Ford Excellence Awards” hosted by the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable (an oil & gas industry group that spends lots of money to make fracking in the Eagle Ford Shale seem like a good thing, a.k.a. STEER), the STBBWGMLMFUE adopted STEER's categories for commendation:
· Community and social investment
· Environmental stewardship
· Safety performance
Rosalynn Rockefeller, representing STBBWGMLMFUE, put the Awards Ceremony in to perspective, "We have an awards ceremony today to honor ourselves because we feel it is important to tell these smaller companies, 'don't be like us.' We really have done a terrible job when it comes to not killing people, not putting additives in to the air, not using up all the water, you know how it goes, it's so hard not to do those things! But we are hoping that in generations to come we can have such a thing as 'safe fracking' as we exploit every last drop of the natural gas and oil that we can find in the Eagle Ford Shale!"
STBBWGMLMFUE chose to highlight just a few of the most impressive examples of some of STEER’s 11 founding members’ track records in these important categories. The MC for the event, Sylvia Swine, started off the awards by bringing attention to Shell’s recent announcement that they are selling all of their 106,000 acres of leases in the Eagle Ford Shale for “not meeting targets for size and profitability.”[i] In recognition of this cut and run style of conducting business in the Eagle Ford Shale communities, Shell was presented with the Award of Shame for the Most Ephemeral Social Investment.
In the category of Environmental Stewardship, Chesapeake Energy Corporation was recognized for a massive two-day-long blowout of one of it’s fracking wells that spewed thousands of gallons of toxic frack fluid across fields and into a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay (one of Maryland’s largest forces of drinking water). In response to spill, Maryland’s Attorney General brought a lawsuit against the Texas-based company for “posing an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of the population adjacent to the well site, recreational users of the Creek and the River and to the environment” and for violating the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Clean Water Act.[ii]
The final “Don’t Be Like Us Award” was bestowed to EOG Resources, in recognition of it’s handling of a serious fracking well blowout. The incident occurred when a “blow-out preventer” failed, spouting pressurized highly-combustible natural gas and 35,000 gallons of contaminated wastewater from the earth like a geyser. The blowout, described as a potentially “catastrophic incident” had the natural gas ignited, was later ruled to have been preventable.[iii] EOG’s failure to follow industry guidelines that require the installation of two blowout preventers, hiring uncertified operators, and it’s baffling delay in alerting emergency authorities until several hours after the blowout definitely earn it the Award of Shame for Barely not Killing Workers through the use of Irresponsible Practices and Faulty Equipment. It will be interesting to see if similar practices caused the recent EOG well explosion in Lavaca County.[iv]
The inaugural “Don’t Be Like Us” Awards were held at STEER offices in the Pearl Brewery complex.
[i] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/30/us-shell-shalesale-idUSBRE98T04J20130930
[ii] http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1880:maryland-to-sue-gas-company-over-fracking-spill&Itemid=29
[iii] http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/90673:investigation-confirms-pennsylvania-fracking-well-blowout-was-easily-preventable-potentially-catastrophic
[iv] http://www.texassharon.com/2013/08/29/blowout-at-eog-site-in-eagle-ford-shale/
