Melinda Janki is a Guyanese lawyer. She was instrumental in writing into Guyana's 1995 constitution the Environmental Protection Act giving its citizens among the strongest protections of any nation, including "the right to an environment that is not harmful to his or her health or well-being." [1]
Janki studied law at Oxford University and University College London and spent part of her early career with British Petroleum. [1] She returned to Guyana in the 1990s to participate in its new democracy and was successful at helping to make its new constitution identify environmental concerns, including a stable climate, as human rights for Guyanese citizens. [1] Later, she served as cochair of the IUCN Commission on Environment and Law, Special Indigenous Peoples Group, [2] where she wrote or cowrote works on topics such as rights-based approaches to using justice systems for environmental conservation and about Guyanese peoples, such as the WaiWai's successful use of Guyana's legal systems to gain fuller ownership of their lands from the government. [3]
In 2021, Janki launched the first of multiple suits against the Guyanese government for making an offshore oil-drilling partnership with ExxonMobil not in accordance with Guyana's strong environmental laws. [1] The project is expected to eventually bring in 750,000 to more than one million barrels of oil a day, making Guyana one of the world's top-twenty oil producers and Exxon's single most voluminous source of oil. [1] [4]
Upon discovering oil in 2015, Exxon made a nonpublic deal with Guyanese president David A. Granger for a series of 23-year permits. [1] These contracts were revealed to the public in 2017. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, by the end of 2021, Exxon and its partners had made $3.6 billion, compared to Guyana’s $607 million and, by 2027, Guyana will owe more than $34 billion to Exxon and its partners. [1]
The suits, however, are plaintiffed by citizens who, for one reason or another, may be negatively affected the drilling or, more generally, climate change as caused by fossil fuels. [5] The third lawsuit states, "The earth’s atmosphere and oceans have been and continue to be polluted by the release and accumulation of greenhouse gases [from] the production, transportation, refining and use of fossil fuels" thus violating Guyana's citizens right to a healthful and sustainable environment. [1] According to Guyanese law, all permits require each involved company to form an environmental impact report and to accept all liability for human and environmental impact. [6]
Exxon has joined the suits as a codefendant, suggesting it feels its business model is potentially threatened by these suits. [1] The suits, if successful, may provide a template for other country's suffering the most immediate risks of climate change to challenge the oil industry's role in effecting the damage. [1]
Janki's first victory was cutting the length of Exxon's contracts from 23 years to five years. [7]
The Sakhalin-I project, a sister project to Sakhalin-II, is a consortium for production of oil and gas on Sakhalin Island and immediately offshore. It operates three fields in the Okhotsk Sea: Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi.
Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) is an environmental advocacy organization based in New England, United States. Since 1966, CLF's mission has been to advocate for New England's environment and its communities. CLF's advocacy work takes place across five integrated program areas: Clean Energy & Climate Change, Clean Air & Water, Healthy Oceans, People & Justice, and Healthy Communities. CLF's mission statement is to "use the law, science, and the market to create solutions that preserve natural resources, build healthy communities, and sustain a vibrant economy." CLF focuses on promoting renewable energy and fight air and water pollution; building sustainable fishing communities and protect marine habitat; promoting public transit and defend public health; achieving environmental justice; and sustaining a vibrant, equitable economy.
Bowoto v. Chevron Corp. was a lawsuit against Chevron Nigeria Ltd., a subsidiary of Chevron USA, which went to trial in 2008 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs, Nigerian citizens who had been injured during or who had survived human rights violations perpetrated by Nigerian military personnel, alleged that the Chevron subsidiary backed the military action and that the parent company thus should bear liability in US courts for the resultant fallout. The suit was decided on December 1, 2008, when nine jurors unanimously agreed Chevron was not liable for any of the numerous allegations. Judgment was entered the next day, officially exonerating Chevron.
Human rights violations in Aceh, Indonesia occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s when ExxonMobil hired Indonesian military units to guard their Arun gas field, and these military units raided and razed local villages. Government inquiries have extensively documented these abuses. Victims allege that ExxonMobil knew about the atrocities, which include assault, torture, and murder, and should be liable for them. The company denies these accusations; its primary defense is that the human rights violations which were occurring were not a result of specific intention of the organization and therefore it cannot be held liable.
Bilateral relations have been established between Guyana and the United States of America.
Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., No. 4:08-cv-01138, is a lawsuit filed on February 26, 2008, in a United States district court. The suit, based on the common law theory of nuisance, claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change. The damage estimates made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Government Accountability Office are placed between $95 million and $400 million. This lawsuit is an example of greenhouse gas emission liability.
Petroleum industry in Guyana is rapidly evolving. Guyana has emerged as one of the newest petroleum producing regions in the world, achieving its first commercial grade crude oil draw in December 2019. Crude oil is sent abroad for refining.
ExxonMobil Corporation is an American multinational oil and gas corporation and the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The company, which took its present name in 1999 per the merger of Exxon and Mobil, is vertically integrated across the entire oil and gas industry, and within it is also a chemicals division which produces plastic, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products. ExxonMobil is headquartered near the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, though officially incorporated in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The company is the largest oil and gas company based in the US, America's third largest by revenue among all industries, and the eighth largest in the world.
Stuart H. Smith was a controversial practicing plaintiff attorney licensed in Louisiana. Smith practiced law for more than 25 years, litigating against oil companies and other energy-related corporations for damages associated with radioactive oilfield waste. Smith was one of the lead legal strategists in on-going national litigation regarding the nation's drug-industry manufactured opioid crisis, having led the nation-wide effort to have the crisis’ impact on opioid-dependent born children recognized as a special class deserving of dedicated, long-term response from those who caused the epidemic in the United States.
American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.
The 2013 Mayflower oil spill occurred on March 29, 2013, when the Pegasus Pipeline, owned by ExxonMobil and carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands, ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Little Rock releasing about 3,190 barrels of oil. Approximately 3,190 barrels of oil and water mix was recovered. Twenty-two homes were evacuated. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the leak as a major spill.
On May 1, 2010, a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, spilled more than a million gallons into the delta and contributed to the major environmental issues in the Niger Delta. The spill had occurred at an Exxon platform some 20–25 miles (32–40 km) offshore which feeds the Qua Iboe oil export terminal. Exxon Mobil declared force majeure on Qua Iboe oil shipments due to the pipeline damage. The leakage in the Qua Iboe oil field discharged about 232 barrels of crude into the Atlantic Ocean contaminating the waters and coastal settlements in the predominantly fishing communities along Akwa Ibom and Cross River.
As the world's largest majority investor-owned oil and gas corporation, ExxonMobil has received significant amounts of controversy and criticism, mostly due to its activities which increase the speed of climate change and its denial of global warming.
From the 1980s to mid 2000s, ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking.
Darren Wayne Woods is an American businessman who is the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil since January 1, 2017.
Climate change litigation, also known as climate litigation, is an emerging body of environmental law using legal practice to set case law precedent to further climate change mitigation efforts from public institutions, such as governments and companies. In the face of slow climate change politics delaying climate change mitigation, activists and lawyers have increased efforts to use national and international judiciary systems to advance the effort. Climate litigation typically engages in one of five types of legal claims: Constitutional law, administrative law, private law (challenging corporations or other organizations for negligence, nuisance, etc., fraud or consumer protection, or human rights.
Lisa Song is an American journalist and author. She won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, with David Hasemyer and Elizabeth McGowan, for their report on the Kalamazoo River oil spill. She works for ProPublica, reporting on the environment, energy and climate change.
ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its roots as far back as 1866 to the founding of the Vacuum Oil Company, which would become part of ExxonMobil through its own merger with Mobil during the 1930s. The present name of the company comes from a 1999 merger of Standard Oil's New Jersey and New York successors, which adopted the names Exxon and Mobil respectively throughout the middle of the 20th century. Because of Standard Oil of New Jersey's ownership over all Standard Oil assets at the time of the 1911 breakup, ExxonMobil is seen by some as the definitive continuation of Standard Oil today.
District of Columbia v. Exxon Mobil Corp. is an ongoing lawsuit filed against Exxon Mobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Oil Corporation by the District of Columbia (D.C.). This case is one of a long list of lawsuits filed against ExxonMobil including environmental and ethical wrongdoings.
