February 26th, 2011:
Satan dealing with the devil in Libya
Shell Reports Release of Deadly Benzene Chemical at Deer Park Refinery
By John Donovan
26 February 2011
Bloomberg News has reported the release of an unknown amount of the deadly chemical benzene at its Deer Park refinery in Texas.
According to one source, “Being exposed to benzene can lead to a host of diseases“.
Extract: “The worse case is associated to acquiring acute myelogenous leukemia, a type of disease that involves the production of cancer cells in the blood. Leukemia prevents the while blood cells from growing properly. White blood cells are the main components of the body’s immune system. With them impaired, the body becomes more prone to developing other diseases. This is a life-threatening condition brought about by exposure to benzene”.
The benzene incident comes 10 years after Royal Dutch Shell made a commitment to invest $400 million over eight years to reduce the release into the atmosphere of toxic chemicals at its nine refineries operating in the USA, including Deer Park and the Martinez refinery in California.
Bloomberg says: “U.S. refineries must notify the National Response Center if they release hazardous substances in excess of reportable quantities, according to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund”.
Shell Reports ‘Unplanned’ Flaring At Martinez Refinery
By John Donovan
According to an article published on 25 February 2011 by The Wall Street Journal, Royal Dutch Shell Plc has recently reported “unplanned” flaring at its Martinez refinery in California.
Shell has a track record of illegal emissions at the refinery, paying fines totaling over $25 million since 1989.
On 1 December 1989, The New York Times reported that Shell Oil Company had agreed to pay $19.75 million for spilling more than 400,000 gallons of crude oil into San Francisco Bay. Shell said that it had spent an additional $14 million in cleaning up the spill, when oil flowed from a pipe at its Martinez refinery in April 1988. Oil leaked out from a 12.5-million-gallon storage tank at the manufacturing complex 40 miles northeast of San Francisco. The Government said that several Federal regulations were broken. According to the article at least 250 birds and 50 other animals were found dead and a valuable wildlife habitat was ruined and tidal marshlands would take 10 years to recover.
Indigenous Ecuadoran woman humbles US oil giant
By Valeria Pacheco AFP 24 Feb 2011
RUMIPAMBA, Ecuador She has no legal training, and doesn’t speak the Spanish that dominates government in Quito but indigenous villager Maria Aguinda helped bring a landmark judgment against US oil giant Chevron for polluting the rain forest she calls home.
The diminutive grandmother whose modest home sits near marshes clogged for decades in sticky oil has been at the heart of the David-and-Goliath case, and spoke out after Chevron was slapped last week with a $9.5-billion fine, among the heaviest ever handed down for environmental damage.
“Before I die they have to pay me for the dead animals, and for what they did to the river, and the water and the earth,” the 61-year-old Aguinda told AFP at her home in Rumipamba, a town in remote Orellana province where pollution caused by 30 years of oil drilling and petroleum accidents had become a sad fact of life.