President Donald Trump kicked off last week with a Monday morning tweet hailing — and seeming to wrongly take credit for — Exxon Mobil’s plan for a $20 billion expansion of its refineries, chemical plants and liquefied natural gas operations along the US Gulf Coast.
“We are already winning again, America!” Trump tweeted after the Texas-based company released the latest details of a plan first announced in 2013 in response to rising natural gas supplies. He went on to tweet, “Buy American & hire American are the principals at the core of my agenda, which is: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.” The company says the expansion, which includes projects at 11 proposed and existing sites in the region, could create as many as 35,000 temporary construction jobs and 12,000 permanent jobs.
But for communities that are already bearing the brunt of the industry’s environmental impact, the expansion is a more complicated matter than just a jobs creator: It also means living with more pollution and other safety hazards.
Last week, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and DisasterMap.net released their latest tally of petrochemical accidents in the state. During the first two weeks of February alone, the environmental group documented 78 such accidents, including 14 on offshore drilling platforms in Louisiana waters. One of the accidents killed a pipeline worker, while another released cancer-causing benzene into the St. James community. (There was another reported spill in St. James this month, when a storage tank owned by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline released over 12,500 gallons of crude oil, with an unknown amount flowing out of the containment and into a ditch.)
The Bucket Brigade’s report serves as a reminder of the industry’s long record of safety problems. For example, oil and gas extraction workers have an on-the-job fatality rate seven times greater than the rate for all US industries, while the oil and gas industry is among the world’s worst polluters.
Exxon Mobil has its own history of serious environmental health and safety problems: the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, toxic releases, deadly incidents at its plants. The company’s Baytown, Texas, facility — among the existing facilities slated for expansion along with plants in Beaumont, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana — has been identified as one of America’s “super polluters.” And among the incidents documented in the latest Louisiana spill report involved the release of cancer-causing 1,3-butadiene from one of Exxon Mobil’s Baton Rouge plants.
Accidents aside, the oil and gas industry takes a heavy toll on environmental health even when operating normally. Consider the tremendous amount of toxic chemicals Exxon Mobil’s refinery and petrochemical facilities in Baton Rouge alone released in 2015: over 3.1 million pounds to the air and another 1 million pounds to surface waters, according to the company’s Toxics Release Inventory data self-reported to the Environmental Protection Agency. These include cancer-causing chemicals like benzene, lead and solvents.
Meanwhile, the fence-line communities most directly affected by the industry’s chronic pollution and frequent accidents are rarely white and wealthy — and now it’s even less likely that they will be get help from federal regulators to help them deal with state regulatory agencies influenced by the industry’s outsized political power (almost $85 million in total contributions in 2016 alone, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics’ FollowTheMoney.org database).
That’s because the Trump administration has proposed $2 billion in cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency — and shuttering its environmental justice office altogether.
“We see these consistently high numbers of accidents in the oil and gas industry on one hand and a plan to systematically dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency on the other hand,” said Renate Heurich of the environmental advocacy group 350 Louisiana. “Given these conditions, we can predict that even more people will lose their health or their lives as a direct consequence.”
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $104,000 in one-time donations and to add 1340 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
If you have the means to make a substantial gift, please dig deep during this critical time!
With gratitude and resolve,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy