Blog Categories: climate crisis

Broad International Opposition to Petrochemical Giant Ineos’ Expansion Plans

Movement seeks to stop #Fracking4Plastics Antwerp expansion

Brussels – A new expansion plan championed by petrochemical company Ineos, which would further deepen the environmentally disastrous connection between the plastics industry and the US fracking boom, is drawing international opposition.

In 2016, Ineos, the largest ethylene producer in Europe, began importing fracked US ethane to Europe to turn it into plastics at its facilities in the UK and Norway. The company wants now to invest €3bn to build a new ethane ‘cracker’ and a propylene producing propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in the Port of Antwerp. The company has started the first of three intended Environmental Impact Assessment procedures for the project, which would deforest an area of 50-55 hectares.

The Port of Antwerp in Flanders, Belgium is home to the largest petrochemical cluster in Europe, and is now the second largest in the world after Houston, Texas. Satellite data showed last year that Belgium, and especially Antwerp, has some of the most polluted air in the world.

The plan of Ineos has spurred international opposition from 20 groups, NGOs and associations, who have jointly submitted an objection to the Port of Antwerp. Signatories from both sides of the Atlantic include Food & Water Europe, Food & Water Watch, #BreakFreeFromPlastic, Talk Fracking, CIEL (Center for International Environmental Law), WECF (Women Engage for a Common Future), Recycling Netwerk, Frack Free United, Greenpeace UK and Environmental Investigation Agency. This joint international objection comes on top of the ones submitted by Belgian grassroots groups and NGOs (such as Antwerpen Schaliegasvrij, StRaten Generaal and Greenpeace Belgium).

The international objection highlights the need to take the cumulative and transboundary climate and environmental effects into account, paying attention to the significant full lifecycle emissions along the supply chain. It states that no deforestation shall be allowed before any permitting decisions can be made on the ethane cracker and the PDH unit.

The signatories also refer to the ongoing plastic pellet pollution in protected Ramsar and Natura 2000 sites, and the absence of its management in the species and waste management plans.

“Apart from the fact that Ineos relies on climate hostile fracked US gas for their plans, we also see here a clear breach of the existing Natura 2000 legislation:, says Andy Gheorghiu, policy advisor and campaigner for Brussels based NGO Food & Water Europe. “The only way to solve the current massive virgin plastic pollution problem is to rein in the sources of such pollution, and that means stopping these facilities, not expanding them.”

“Ineos is a climate and environmental disaster — benefiting from fracking in the U.S. while planning to bring the dangerous practice to the United Kingdom and mainland Europe to produce more plastic waste,” said Scott Edwards, legal director of Food & Water Watch. “This company’s plans have been and will be met with a passionate, committed grassroots movement on both sides of the Atlantic. The Port of Antwerp must understand the additional high financial risk the relationship with Ineos represents.”

Joe Corré, founder of Talk Fracking, adds: “Every facility, like the proposed one by Ineos, that relies on fracked gas is a direct contribution to a dramatic increase in global warming, a constant production of plastic pollution and an involvement in human rights abuses along the supply chain. Everyone involved must be held responsible”.

“The #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement brings nearly 1,300 organisations around the world together to fight plastic pollution. INEOS are fuelling the plastics expansion with cheap plastics that will pollute our environment, but together we can put a stop to their polluting practices and expansion plans.” concludes Delphine Lévi Alvarès, coordinator of Break Free From Plastic in Europe. “The Port of Antwerp has already a massive transformational task to achieve. The investment plans of Ineos will torpedo every effort towards this necessary and existential process.”

Interntational Objection (EN)

International Objection (NL)

 

Contacts:
Andy Gheorghiu, policy advisor and campaigner, Food & Water Europe
Mobile: 0049 160 20 30 974
Email: [email protected]

Food & Water Europe Activists Arrested at Tour de France in Violation of Basic Civil Rights

The individuals placed under arrest were a part of the ongoing protests of Ineos’ corporate sponsorship of the former Team Sky, which often include masks of CEO Jim Ratcliffe as a way to “unmask” the chemical company’s greenwashing efforts. Petrochemical giant Ineos imports climate destructive fracked gas for its virgin plastic production and has big plans to further expand this polluting business in Europe.

Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe see this arrest as a violation of basic rights guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and other protections of rights of expression and assembly.

It is also part of a troubling trend worldwide to punish protesters whose free speech harms the reputation of corporate entities like Ineos.

“My freedom was taken away simply because I wore a t-shirt to protest Ineos’ corporate sponsorship, and to highlight the company’s destructive impact on the climate,” said Gheorghiu. “I was told that I was being detained because of a fear I would ‘disrupt’ a team presentation for the Tour de France. Our intention was to distribute the masks and talk to people about the chemical company’s problematic sponsorship of the event. One police officer said that they know that ‘my organisation’ has done other things the police don’t like.”

In response to the arrests, Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe executive director, Wenonah Hauter, released the following statement:

“This arrest is not only a violation of our colleagues’ basic civil rights, but it is also a brazen display of state power to protect the reputation of a corporation and its owner, billionaire Jim Ratcliffe. It is he and his company that poses the threat to our climate and Europe’s safety and security, not peaceful protesters.

“This is part of a troubling trend in Europe, U.S. and beyond where peaceful environmental protests are increasingly being criminalized. Just last month, a UN Special Rapporteur on human rights warned that our basic liberties and rights are imperiled by increasing climate chaos. Every time a climate activist is arrested under sham pretenses, our rights erode a little further.

“We call for an immediate investigation into this arrest and the human rights violations it represents. We can’t let our institutions flout the rule of law and our democratic rights to protect billionaires and fossil fuel companies—or any company—from public scrutiny and peaceful protest.”

Contacts:

Food & Water Europe: Andy Gheorghiu, +49 160 20 30 974; [email protected]

Food & Water Watch (U.S.): Peter Hart, +1-732-839-0871; [email protected]

 

 

 

Over 700 New U.S. Facilities Will Support Trump’s Energy Dominance Via Freedom Gas

European Imports of U.S. Fracked Gas Up Nearly 300% Since Last Year

Brussels — As decision makers, industry and officials meet at the Madrid Forum to discuss the creation of an internal gas market in Europe, Food & Water Watch released a report showing that more than 700 U.S. facilities have been built or are planned to take advantage of cheap fracked U.S. gas. The Fracking Endgame: Locked Into Plastic, Pollution and Climate Chaos is the first survey of the extent to which the oil and gas industry, the petrochemical industry, and the electric power industry in the U.S. are building out fracked gas infrastructure to export liquefied natural gas (LNG), manufacture more plastics, and build gas-fired power plants.

The Food & Water Watch report follows on the heels of recent remarks by U.S. Department of Energy Officials calling LNG exports “molecules of U.S. freedom” and “freedom gas”.

“Trump’s so-called ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda is not just a domestic policy: it’s a foreign policy,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe. “Meanwhile, EU officials are working with the Trump administration to enrich energy cronies for something Europeans don’t need, and that will commit us to climate and plastic pollution. On top of that, they are diverting EU public money to build these import facilities. EU’s leaders are paving the way for U.S. energy dominance over Europe and a dangerous fossil lock-in.”

According to the European Commission, U.S. LNG exports to Europe have risen by 272% since July 2018. Many EU Member States currently import fracked US gas, while many have fracking bans on the books in their own countries. This is all despite the fact that Europe has not suffered gas shortages. The utilisation rate of all existing EU LNG terminals is – following calculations based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe –  at only about one quarter, clearly showing that any new investments in LNG infrastructure will almost inevitably create stranded assets.

Last month, over 200 groups in the U.S. and Europe called on their leaders to stop the Transatlantic LNG trade, saying it “torpedoes critical climate targets and violates basic human rights.”

The report notes that:

  • The U.S. plastics industry is projecting it will add 28 million tons of plastic production between 2011 and 2020, and more than $202 billion slated to be invested in 333 new facilities and expansions related to fracked gas (including 20 ethylene crackers that will turn shale gas into feedstock for plastic manufacturing.) This investment is expected to drive a 40 percent increase in global plastic production over the next decade.
  • U.S. gas exporters are promoting LNG exports to reduce the domestic gas supply and raise prices. In 2018, there were three active LNG export facilities in the U.S., but 22 more were either already being built or were approved for construction; 22 more were pending federal review.
  • The U.S. power industry has 364 new gas-fired plants under development between 2018-2022, with gas deliveries to power plants rising 57 percent between 2006 and 2017.

“We are seeing a Transatlantic lock-in of fossil fuels unfold before our eyes,” says Hauter. “And it won’t be the people of the U.S. or Europe that benefit: it will be the fossil fuel and plastic industry.”

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Read the Food & Water Watch report The Fracking End Game: Locked in to Plastics, Pollution and Climate Chaos

A short companion fact sheet can be found here.

 Contacts:

 Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor & Campaigner, Food & Water Europe, Stechbahn 9, 34497 Korbach, Germany, email: [email protected]; mobile: +49 160 20 30 974

Frida Kieninger, Campaign Officer, Food & Water Europe, Rue d’Edimbourg 26, Brussels 1050, Belgium  •  email: [email protected]; +32 (0) 2893 1045; mobile: +32 487 24 99 05

On Eve of EU-US Energy Forum, 200 Groups on Both Sides of the Atlantic Unite in Opposition To Climate-hostile LNG Trade

Brussels/Washington, DC – Today, 200 groups from both sides of the Atlantic released an open letter to EU Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, calling on the EU and U.S. administrations to immediately stop the transatlantic trade in fracked hydrocarbons.

Yesterday, the Department of Energy announced that Secretary Perry would be attending the EU-US Energy Council High-Level Forum in Brussels on May 2 – paving the way for a new Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement with imports and exports of U.S. fracked gas at the heart of the deal. According to data released in early March, EU imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the U.S. have increased by 181% since July 2018.[i]

The letter highlights that the continued use and import/export of fracked LNG torpedoes critical climate targets and violates basic human rights. In 2012, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a “Global Alert” on fracking, concluding that fracking may have environmental impacts even if done properly.[ii]

“The LNG trade is paving the way for prolonged use of fossil fuels and plastics, creating a twin environmental and human rights emergency,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe. “Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are failing to do what it takes to stand up to fracked gas interests and prevent looming climate chaos.”

The signatories state that new gas infrastructure has a significant economic lifespan (usually between 30 and 50 years) that goes beyond the point when we must fully decarbonize our energy systems. Ongoing use of fossil fuels like gas would also have devastating economic impacts on both sides of the Atlantic.

The letter also refers to what activists call the #Fracking4Plastics link, highlighting that the plastics industry has reaped under-the-radar benefits from the environmentally destructive fracking boom and an oversupply of cheap ethane. This surge has been a boon for the plastics industry, which relies on petrochemical manufacturing to turn ethane, a hydrocarbon present in natural gas, into plastics.

Beginning in 2012, chemical companies started aggressively investing in petrochemical plants and export facilities focused on tapping the ethane glut, creating further negative implications for human and environmental rights.

“The EU is importing U.S. fracked gas to create plastics,” says Andy Gheorghiu, policy advisor at Food & Water Europe. “Europe is throwing away a stable climate for a throw-away society.”

Signatories include Food & Water Watch, Food & Water Europe, Friends of the Earth U.S. and EU, Greenpeace, Break Free From Plastic, European Environmental Bureau, Oil Change International, Rainforest Action Network, Talk Fracking, Health and Environment Justice Support International, Earthworks, 350, Corporate Europe Observatory, Rethink Plastic, Ocean Conservation Research, Frack Free United, Berks Gas Truth, SEE Change Network and Safety Before LNG.

Press contacts:

Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor & Campaigner, Food & Water Europe, [email protected], +49 160 20 30 974

Scott Edwards, Legal Director, Food & Water Watch, [email protected], +1 202.683.4969

Further Links:
Open letter (.pdf)

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[i] See the European Commission Press Release
EU-U.S. Joint Statement: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from the U.S. continue to rise, up by 181%
[ii] Read More about UNEP’s Global Environment Alert About Gas Fracking. 4 Dezember 2012.

Failure to kick ExxonMobil out of EU Parliament as MEPs buckle under company’s lobby pressure

For immediate release

Brussels – The European Parliament’s Quaestors, responsible for upholding the institution’s code of conduct, today failed to revoke ExxonMobil’s lobby badges despite multiple Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and political groups, as well as over 100 civil society organisations, calling for a withdrawal. The decision grants the corporation’s six lobbyists continued unrestricted access to the EU institution even though it misled the public on the issue of climate change and refused to attend a corresponding public hearing last month. The decision has been mired by behind-the-scenes lobbying by ExxonMobil and its trade association FuelsEurope.

Frida Kieninger, Food & Water Europe, originator of the petition that led to the ExxonMobil climate change denial hearing:

“MEPs missed a huge opportunity to show they are on the side of the people, not polluters. While the public is increasingly concerned about climate change and calls out the fossil fuel industry for blocking progress, our politicians don’t seem to agree. At the upcoming EU elections, voters will elect those who represent them, not politicians bowing to the interests of big oil, gas and coal companies.

“The European Union had the chance to show it was different from Trump’s America, but blew it. Rather than standing up to vested interests, it simply confirmed its place in the pocket of fossil fuel industry.”

Pascoe Sabido, Corporate Europe Observatory:

“ExxonMobil and its lobby groups might be celebrating today’s decision, but not for long. Their scare tactics and blackmailing have kept the parliament open to their lobbyists only temporarily. The whole fossil fuels industry and its destructive political influence are under increasing scrutiny, as they try to strangle the much-needed green energy transition that is threatening their multi-billion euro profits.

“ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total and their likes all are equally guilty of lobbying against climate action, and must all be held to account. The millions of people regularly taking to the streets for climate action will also make their voices heard at the ballot boxes next month – especially first-time voters, who are not going to stand for fossil fuel-friendly candidates.”

Dr. Geoffrey Supran, Harvard University, expert witness called by the European Parliament to testify in the Exxon climate change denialism hearing:

“It’s disappointing to see one of climate politics’ rogue agents continue to have backdoor access to EU politicians. This sends an unfortunate legitimising signal to fossil fuel interests everywhere: You can misled the public and delay action for decades, you can refuse to stand accountable, and you will get away with it. At least for now.

“Nevertheless, these proceedings have yielded important outcomes. For one, MEPs are now formally on notice that they have a bad actor on climate change whispering in their ears. For another, the EU’s hearing established crucial precedent. This was the first time, anywhere in the world, that lawmakers convened expressly to hear expert testimony about the history and consequences of climate change denial by the fossil fuel industry. As with the history of tobacco, this was just the first hearing — it won’t be the last.”

***ENDS***

Notes to editor:

  • For more information on the behind-the-scenes lobbying surrounding the decisions by ExxonMobil and its trade association, FuelsEurope, see here
  • For a background on the public hearing that ExxonMobil refused to attend, see here
  • See the letter from more than 100 CSOs

Contact information:

Food & Water Europe: Frida Kieninger, [email protected], +32 289 310 45 / +32 487 24 99 05

Corporate Europe Observatory: Pascoe Sabido, [email protected], +44 7969 665 189/ +32 486 85 74 16

100+ Organizations Urge the EU Parliament to Remove ExxonMobil’s Lobby Badges

Brussels — On March 21, the EU Parliament held the first ever public hearing on climate change denial addressing the special role ExxonMobil played in its decades-long campaign to distort the truth about global warming. The impetus for this hearing was a petition submitted by Food & Water Europe urging the Parliament to act on the case.

ExxonMobil was invited to attend the hearing and give parliamentarians an opportunity to publicaly answer questions about misleading the public, but the multinational fossil fuel giant refused the invitation. Instead, ExxonMobil sent the organizers of the hearing a private letter attempting to discredit one of the expert witnesses, MIT and Harvard researcher Dr. Geoffrey Supran, using a non-peer-reviewed report commissioned and paid for by ExxonMobil.

Reacting to this, more than 100 Brussels and international NGOs and organizations submitted an open letter heavily criticizing ExxonMobil’s behavior and calling on parliamentarians to revoke the fossil fuel corporation’s direct access to the EU Parliament.

Read the letter.