Racism In The Oil & Gas Industry? – CleanTechnica

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Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt was one of the richest men in America. According to some online sources, he was allegedly a white supremacist or supported white supremacy.

H.L. Hunt is one of the Texas oil billionaires mentioned here. “On a scale not always appreciated, the Texas oil billionaires nurtured the growth of America’s radical right, financing Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt, a string of extremist newsletters (devoted to attacking such hidden dangers as the Jewish Gestapo) and even setting up an openly white-supremacist third political party, the Texas Regulars.” 

An article on the Texas Historical Association website states this about the Texas Regulars:

“The Regulars opposed the New Deal and the labor unions and called for the restoration of states’ rights and White supremacy.”

Now, if you are familiar with Hunt, you might think something like, “None of this matters now because he died a long time ago.” That’s right, he passed in 1974.

However, there are still two Texas oil billionaires today that are allegedly connected to white supremacists.

“West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks entered the 2024 primary election cycle wounded. Their political network was in the middle of a scandal over its ties to white supremacists. Republicans were calling on each other to reject the billionaires’ campaign money.”

Several references to Texas oil billionaires with alleged ties to white supremacy might seem somewhat limited in scope.

The Sierra Club website has a long article about the history of American gas and oil with various connections to racism.

“In researching the history of oil in modern America since the 1860s to the present, oil was I think unquestionably the most racially homogenous industry in America. And, there are clear racist patterns of organization within the industry from the very beginning,” says Dochuk, author of Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.

The Dochuk cited here is Darren Dochuk, in the department of history at the University of Notre Dame. 

A report released by Accountable.US took a slightly different look at the oil and gas industry and racism, focusing on the location of industrial sites and their proximity to communities where people of color live.

“The report exposes the industry’s decades-long practice of using communities of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people as sites for oil and gas production, exposing them to deadly pollution linked to increased rates of cancer, heart disease, and premature death. Emissions, leaks, and oil spills can threaten communities’ air quality, water supply, food, job prospects, and ecosystem. Additionally, the report reveals that Chevron, Phillips 66, and ConocoPhillips’ operate refineries in two majority-minority cities have coincided with disproportionate cancer, asthma, and death rates.”

One historian wrote a book titled Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, and his view is that some, but maybe not all, Birch society members were racist.

“So I argue that there was, at the heart of the movement, a more explicit racism. They drew energy from bigots. They had many racists and antisemites that we – I document in the book who were card-carrying members, and some of the leaders were bigots as well.”

It’s necessary to go back to H.L Hunt for a moment to make a connection between Birchers and the present day. Hunt allegedly used radio to broadcast views consistent with those of  the John Birch Society.

In our time, a leading figure in the gas and oil industry who is allegedly known for backing campaigns to spread climate change misinformation is Charles Koch. The Koch brothers, and their father, made an enormous fortune from the gas and oil industry, among other commercial efforts.

His father, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the John Birch Society. At least one source says the Koch brothers were involved many years ago in efforts that opposed African-Americans, saying “The Koch brothers and the organizations they fund have devoted themselves for more than a decade to attacking the voting rights of African Americans. They support voter identification laws. They seek to restrict early voting and voter registration. They support laws that threaten organizations that register voters in the African American community.”

Koch funding was tied to what one author called racist economics. It was also involved in getting Donald Trump elected President.

“In 2016, Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’s primary vehicle for influence that operates as a privately run political party, hired over 650 staffers, deploying many to battleground states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, to turn out Republican voters. The field staff filled in the gaps left by Trump’s chaotic field operation. In Wisconsin alone, Americans for Prosperity staff, equipped with state-of-the-art voter contact technology, made 1.5 million phone calls and knocked on nearly 30,000 doors.”

That isn’t the only connection.

Trump recently tried to raise a great sum of money from oil and gas executives, “In a closed door meeting in April, Trump reportedly told a group of oil and gas executives that they should raise $1 billion for his campaign and promised that he would take specific actions, including issuing drilling and export permits that some oil and gas companies have pursued for years, on “day one” of his next presidential term.” In fact, he may even try to reverse other aspects of Biden’s environmental plans and is in step with the oil and gas industry. In his presidential administration, he supported oil and gas lease sales and oversaw record sales.

But is Trump racist or has he made racist statements? According to various sources, he has made such statements. Vox compiled a rather long list of such situations.

Just a few are included here:

“Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”

“A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

“Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US. He claimed to send investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.” The research has found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.”

“Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign was largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.”

He has allegedly begun race-baiting in his current campaign.

Another problem fossil fuels have when considered in the context of racism is their impact. Several researchers coined the term fossil fuel racism to describe it.

“We term the inequitable, intersectional, multiscale impact of these sources collectively to be “fossil fuel racism,” and analyze it as a subset of environmental racism. Fossil fuel racism we argue is characterized by the disproportionate and racialized effects of climate change, fossil fuel extraction, transportation, processing, and consumption on Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor populations. We position this study in part as a response to Pellow’s [10] call for ‘multiscalar’ EJ research, which explores geographical linkages between seemingly disparate cases of environmental harms and embeds these linkages with deep historical context.”

In the United States, there is one glaring example of this effect in “Cancer Alley,” which is located in Louisiana. Almost 150 oil refineries, chemical facilities, and plastic plants are located there. Many African-American people live in that area. Numerous sources note the negative health impacts that those residents face. 

“‘…documents how residents of Cancer Alley suffer the effects of extreme pollution from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry, facing elevated rates and risks of maternal, reproductive, and newborn health harms, cancer, and respiratory ailments. Parts of Cancer Alley have the highest risk of cancer from industrial air pollution in the United States. These harms are disproportionately borne by the area’s Black residents.”

There are so many online sources confirming the terrible, if not tragic, situation in Louisiana that doing the research might be a little depressing. The negative impacts are not limited to health and the environment, however. The Center for International Environmental Law published a press release including this statement: “Today’s statement affirms what those of us living and working in Louisiana have known for decades: the corporate polluters that have created Cancer Alley trample on a wide range of human rights, from the right to clean air to the rights to water, life, and non-discrimination.” 

The name “Cancer Alley” was coined in about 1988, but the industrial activities that have been harming local Louisiana residents may have preceded it by decades. Petroleum corporations and petrochemical companies exist to make money, so if they don’t care about the environment or the health of human communities, this indifference might not be surprising. They are accountable to laws and they can be pushed back on by local people who organize and persist.

For example, one grassroots organization, Rise St. James, has had success in blocking the expansion of petrochemical facilities.There is also a collection of short films about women who live in the Cancer Alley area which shares their perspectives and personal stories. Sometimes small acts of self-expression by the people who are impacted the most can be considered victories too.

The fossil fuel racism is not limited to Louisiana. In Texas, there is a similar aggregation of industrial facilities with corresponding toxic emissions and local health problems in the Houston Ship Channel area. “The international human rights organization found that people in communities near the ship channel, which are predominantly low-income communities of color, have life expectancies up to 20 years shorter than largely white and affluent areas about 15 miles away. Amnesty International pinned the problem on the petrochemical industry as well as state and federal environmental regulators.” The human rights organization referenced here is Amnesty International. A non-profit organization called Healthy Gulf published a piece with information that states people of color are negatively impacted by the Houston Ship Channel pollution.

So far, this article has had a US-centric focus, which might give the impression the oil and gas industry’s connection with racism is only in America. It is not, as evidenced by the following situation in Canada, “Federal politicians have joined the chorus of anger over Imperial Oil’s failure to alert a downriver First Nations community of a massive release of oilsands tailings first reported last May.

“This is an outrageous act of environmental racism,” Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May told Canada’s National Observer. Her comments came the day after Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam released a statement accusing Imperial Oil of hiding the massive spill from the nation.” In South America, indigenous people played a significant role by organizing against oil and gas activities. “The people of Ecuador voted on Sunday to halt all current and future oil drilling in the heart of Yasuni National Park in the Amazon rainforest. This comes after decades of organizing led by a coalition of Indigenous peoples, youth, and activists from across the country. Voters also chose to ban all mining in the Choco Andino forest, near the country’s capital, Quito.”

Even though oil and gas corporations and petrochemical companies have ample funds and various resources on their sides, they can be defeated when they break laws or harm the environment and/or human health. Systemic problems might seem overwhelming, but we can all join together and contribute to the solutions. One way for the people who aren’t going to volunteer with the activist organizations or become an employee is by making donations to those organizations. Another is by replacing gas and diesel-powered personal vehicles with all-electric ones. It is conceivable that at some point in the future all gas and oil corporations will be defunct, thus eliminating their racist impacts. Fossil fuel racism, can, and presumably will, end.