Michael Riordon

the view from where I live

Category Archives: Banking


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And yet, grounds for hope. Real hope.

Against impossible odds:  Ecuadoreans’ Legal Fight Against Chevron Continues in Canada.

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Texaco/Chevron vs Ecuador.  Photo: La Hora.

On South America’s teleSur, journalist Joe Emersberger interviews lawyer Stephen Donziger on a crucial case with huge implications for us all.

Donziger: “The fact top law firms around the world are helping the Ecuadorean villagers is terrifying to Chevron and the fossil fuel industry and completely changes the risk calculus of oil drilling in delicate ecosystems.  These firms normally represent the oil industry; now they are representing groups fighting that industry. That’s never happened before.”

The interview is here.

True, this couldn’t happen without the lawyers.  But before, during and after the courts have their say, again and again it’s people who live on the land and water under siege that have to hold the front line.  Against Dakota Access, Enbridge, Line 9, Kinder Morgan, Energy East and all the other petro-invaders.

If our planet is to remain livable, these are the first people we should thank, and support.

 

 


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DAPL and DNB: good news

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Resisting the machine

DNB, the largest bank in Norway, has just sold its assets in the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).  Reports are unclear on the extent and nature of these assets (or maybe I just don’t know how to translate financialese).  However, by all accounts the assets dumped by the bank are substantial.

Further, DNB is now considering the withdrawal of its loans to the project as well, which would leave a major gap in the project’s financing.

A first crack in the banking wall, DNB’s move is a direct result of steadfast resistance to the invading pipeline by the besieged Standing Rock Sioux and their allies, and escalating public pressure on the banks to divest from it.

This week from the Sacred Stone Camp, ground zero, comes a stark breakdown of why Energy Transfer Partners (the DAPL perpetrators) are pushing so aggressively to complete construction.

The stakes are incalculable: on one side, billions of dollars in profits, on the other side, survival.

Contact information for the CEOs of DAPL and other Bakken pipeline-complicit banks is here.  If you bank with one of them, how about letting them know you might not?