Post Tags: climate crisis

UK Fracking Billionaire Reportedly Leaves for Tax Haven in Monaco

Ineos CEO Jim Ratcliffe wants to frack the UK to build his polluting plastics empire

Washington, D.C. and Brussels – The owner of chemical giant Ineos, who has been leading the charge to expand the environmentally destructive practice of fracking to the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, is reportedly planning to move to the tax haven of Monaco.

Ineos’ billionaire CEO Jim Ratcliffe—named the richest man in the UK this year, and who was also knighted in June—has waged a public campaign to downplay the risks of fracking in the UK. The supply of fracked gas would feed the company’s energy-intensive petrochemical facilities, which are major sources of air and water pollution around the world.

Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:

“Jim Ratcliffe has pioneered Trans-Atlantic gas liquids shipments from Pennsylvania, which means more fracking and pollution in the United States and more plastics manufacturing pollution in Scotland. All of that drilling brings us closer to climate chaos, which is why the fight against fracking must be global. Polluters like Ratcliffe must be held responsible for the damage they are causing around the globe.”

Reacting to the news that Ratcliffe is moving to live in a tax haven, Joe Corré of Talk Fracking said: “Jim Ratcliffe has used the legal system in the UK to silence people’s right to protest in the form of far-reaching draconian injunctions. He’s bought the government pushing through permitted development for fracking against science and against the will of the people. After all that, Britain’s richest man – worth £22 Billion – has made himself a tax exile in Monaco.”

Steve Mason, spokesman for Frack Free United, added: “Here we see the true colours of Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos. Just like Amazon, Ratcliffe’s primary aim is making tax-free cash at the expense of the UK population, which includes environmental and health impacts for hundreds of communities. This trumps his cynical use of the America’s Cup team and the sponsoring of kids’ fun runs to greenwash his plans to frack up the North to enrich his plastics empire. The artful dodger has definitely been bettered!”

Over the past dozen years, Ineos has transformed from a global chemical powerhouse into an oil, gas, and petrochemical conglomerate. The company’s number of shale licenses makes it the UK’s number one wannabe-fracker.

Ineos has promoted itself as an “Anglo-Swiss” company. In 2016, Ineos re-opened its London headquarters with fanfare, and its executive owners became UK tax residents. Despite Ineos’ substantial UK footprint, it is far from an English company; parent company Ineos Limited is incorporated in the Isle of Man, a low-tax offshore finance centre. And many of Ineos’ biggest holding companies—such as Ineos AG, Ineos Holdings AG and Ineos Europe AG—are based in Switzerland.

Three-Year Old Report on Fracking Risks Quietly Published This Week After Cuadrilla Permit Awarded

Ineos and Cuadrilla benefited from the delay in publication and their permits should be revoked, says advocacy group

Washington, D.C. and Brussels — In 2015, the UK Government’s Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG) wrote a report citing the increase of national pollution emissions that would be caused by proposed shale development in Britain.

Before the report was finally published this week, Public Health England, UK’s official body for the improvement of the nation’s health and wellbeing, always concluded that “the risks to public health from exposure to emissions from shale gas extraction are low if operations are properly run and regulated.”

Now, the AQEG report warns that “Impacts on local and regional air quality have the potential to be substantially higher than the national level impacts, as extraction activities are likely to be highly clustered. Studies in the US have shown significant impacts on both local air quality and regional ozone formation, but similar studies have not yet been undertaken for the UK.“

In response, Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:

“The apparent suppression of this important report has helped the fossil fuel industry’s plans to turn communities into sacrifice zones. This inevitable industrialisation that goes along with shale development and the need to take the cumulative impacts into account was clearly highlighted in several formal comments against fracking plans in the UK.

“However, the UK Government chose to ignore the known risks and instead, gave companies like Cuadrilla and Ineos the go-ahead for their plans to frack – mostly for plastics.

“The public knows the dangers fracking poses to our clean air and water, and its direct connection to plastic production and waste. Communities in Pennsylvania have already experienced dangerous air and water pollution linked to fracking and plastic production. And now, activists in the UK are taking bold action to protect their communities against these threats.

“Companies like Cuadrilla and Ineos would like to stifle this movement, and the current UK Government has chosen to oppose those advocating for a healthy climate and a livable world. It’s time for the government to do the right thing and revoke Cuadrilla’s and Ineos’s permits in light of the now published evidence.”

In Fracking Case, Scottish Court Rules Against Ineos

Petrochemical giant Ineos lost its challenge to the Scottish government’s moratorium on fracking.

In response, Food & Water Europe and Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:

“In its quest to frack Scotland, Ineos has been blocked by local government officials, the courts, and the overwhelming majority of the Scottish public. The company should heed this overwhelming opposition and abandon its dangerous scheme to frack Scotland.

“Ineos’ fracking for plastics has made a significant contribution to pollution on both sides of the Atlantic. The company has most recently complained about the negative impacts of the shutdown of the Mariner East pipeline in Pennsylvania, which supplies its Grangemouth facility. It is clear that Ineos only wants to frack the UK in order to secure a cheap feedstock for its plastic production.

“The next step for the Scottish government is to clear up any remaining ambiguity and enact a once-and-for-all total ban on fracking.”

EU/UK Andy Gheorghiu, Food & Water Europe, [email protected]

US Peter Hart, Food & Water Watch, [email protected]

‘PLANET INEOS’ : THE QUEST TO FRACK FOR PLASTICS THREATENS AIR, WATER, AND CLIMATE

BREAKING:  Scottish Court Rules Against Ineos in Fracking Case

Food & Water Watch / Food & Water Europe documents delivered to No 10 Downing Street by fashion icon Vivienne Westwood and her son Jon Corré

London/Brussels/ — Dame Vivienne Westwood and her son Joe Corré brought a vision of Armageddon today to No 10 on UN World Environment Day in a protest over pollution from fracking, and the government’s hypocrisy over plastics.

Backed by research materials from Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe on the corporate profile and bad environmental record of secretive petrochemical company Ineos, they’ve delivered ‘Planet INEOS”, a representation of the harms caused by plastic pollution and climate change.

Petrochemical giant INEOS is Britain’s biggest private company, owned by UK’s richest man, controversial billionaire and fracking profiteer Jim Ratcliffe. Ineos owns more fracking licenses than any other energy company in the UK and already use fracked gas from the United States to manufacture plastics.

The campaigners say that despite the government’s recently announced War on Plastic, its industrial policy gives plastic production a higher priority than energy.

Corré, who is head of Talk Fracking, says: “It’s impossible to reconcile the Government’s War on Plastic with its policy on fracking when they’re clearly enabling the creation of yet more problem plastic. It’s sheer hypocrisy.

“If INEOS get their way and fulfil their ambition to frack the length and breadth of the UK, they will be making a vast contribution to the already growing pile of cheap plastics in the world today.”

INEOS have a horrendous environmental track record in Europe and have been responsible for toxic chemicals, leaks, fires and explosions that have endangered workers, communities and the environment.

“Now they plan to bring those dangers to hundreds of communities across the UK, just to make more plastics that we don’t want,” Corré added.

Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Watch Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter, said: “INEOS’s fracking dreams are a nightmare for communities on both sides of the Atlantic, and that’s why so many people are speaking up to stop them. Anyone who cares about the climate crisis, the increasing burden of global plastics pollution, and the air and water pollution associated with petrochemical manufacturing should get active in the fight to stop INEOS from fracking the UK.”

This action is being supported by the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement.

More than 30 Grassroots Movements and NGOs Form an Alliance Against Factory Farming in Spain

Madrid—Last weekend, the second national meeting of Spanish communities against factory farming took place in Minglanilla (Cuenca), involving more than 20 grassroots movements from affected areas all over the country and ten national and international organisations.

The organisation of a national coordination against factory farming started last year to face the dramatic and uncontrolled increase of factory farms in Spain. Its aim is to coordinate movements and organisations opposing this industry.

“The second national meeting ‘Stop Factory Farmin’’ has been a clear success. Many movements from affected regions were represented, with loads of energy to campaign against the hundreds of new factory farm projects that could turn our rural areas into real dung-hills,” said Inma Lozano, spokesperson of the National Alliance Stop Factory Farming. “Factory farming has severe impacts on the environment, public health, rural economies and animal welfare and we need to stop it as soon as possible,” she added.

The National Coordination supports the mobilizations against factory farming that will happen in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo) on Thursday 31st of May, organised by the regional platforms.

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The Spanish National Coordination against Factory Farming (Coordinadora Estatal Stop Ganadería Industrial) includes local movements from Andalusia (Stop Cerdos Intensivos en el Altiplano de Granada y Almería), Aragon (Plataforma Loporzano SIN Ganadería Intensiva), Castille-La Mancha (ADERA – Asociación para la Economía Responsable de Almendros, Asociación ecologista Serendipia, CLM Stop Macrogranjas, Coordinadora Acuífero 23 sin macrogranjas, El Horcajo Plataforma Cívica- Lucillos, Plataforma Cívica de Gamonal, Plataforma no a la macrogranja en Pozuelo y Argamasón, Plataforma Retamoso Sostenible – Stop Macrogranjas, Pueblos Vivos Cuenca, Pueblos Vivos/Stop Macrogranjas de Cañete, Pueblos Vivos/Stop Macrogranjas de Priego, Stop Macrogranjas Alpera y Ayora, Stop macrogranjas Comarca de Molina de Aragón), Castille and Leon (Plataforma Pueblos unidos de Tábara) and Murcia (Plataforma Ciudadana Salvemos el Arabí y Comarca); and national and international NGO (Friends of the Earth Spain, Compassion in World Farming, Ecologistas en Acción, Food & Water Europe, Greenpeace and Justicia Alimentaria).

European Parliament to Address #ExxonKnew Scandal, Consider Action Against the Fossil Fuel Giant

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Food

Parliament Committee Will Address a Petition Submitted by Food & Water Europe Demanding Accountability for Decades-Long Climate Change Cover-Up

May 15, 2018 – The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament announced that it will consider tomorrow a petition calling on the Parliament to take action to hold ExxonMobil accountable for its decades-long cover-up of internal documents tying its fossil fuel production to globe-threatening climate change. The scandal, known colloquially as #ExxonKnew, arose in 2015 when evidence came to light showing that Exxon scientists confirmed at least as early as 1981 that fossil fuel extraction and burning contributed significantly to dangerous climate change, but hid those conclusions and funded massive efforts to publicly challenge its own internal science.

Parliament’s interest in challenging Exxon comes in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s egregious climate denial and aggressive promotion of the fossil fuel industry. President Trump appointed Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil during much of their science cover-up period, as his first secretary of state. The European Union, signatory of the Paris Climate Agreement and aiming at becoming global leader in renewable energy should take its responsibility to draw boundaries to fossil fuel multinationals like Exxon. With ExxonMobil’s misleading campaign on the European Parliament’s agenda, parliamentarians have now the chance to help protect EU citizens from the corporation’s risky business and to walk the talk of preserving EU climate and energy targets.

“ExxonMobil has misled the public debate on climate change for over 40 years but due to close ties between ExxonMobil and the Trump administration, an initial push to hold the corporation accountable is stalled,” said Member of European Parliament Marina Albiol Guzman, a member of the Petitions Committee. “Tackling ExxonMobil’s climate cover up now in the European Parliament could be an opportunity for parliamentarians to walk the talk and prove their willingness to tackle climate change and honor the Paris Agreement.”

“European Parliament’s interest in holding ExxonMobil accountable for its decades of lies and cover-ups is certainly encouraging,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe. “The ball is now rolling on a process that may finally force Exxon to reckon with its toxic, deceitful past and answer for its assault on our planet. We urge Parliament to act swiftly and aggressively in this critical matter, and take powerful action against Exxon.”

 

Contact: Frida Kieninger – Tel: +32 (0) 2893 1045, Mobile: +32 (0) 487 24 99 05