Travel by car is a way of life for most of us, our lives, jobs and cities are designed around it. For those of us dependant on using the internal combustion engine, is there an ethical choice of fuel?
This article attempts to rank the oil companies according to the ethics of their behaviour and examines the oil companies behaviour within several categories including Boycott calls, Environmental Impact, Human and Animal Rights Abuses, Investment in Renewable Energy and Revenue Transparency.
Boycott Calls
Six of the 7 companies supplying petrol in the UK are subject to boycott calls.
BP for donating money to the Republican party (www.boycottbush.net)
Exxon for being the ‘number one climate criminal according to Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org.uk)
Shell for land rights issues in Ireland (www.corribsos.com)
Total for involvement in Burma (www.totalitarian-oil.blogspot.com/)
Chevron for involvement in Burma and donating money to the Republican party
Esso for being the only oil company to deny the existence of climate change, zero investment in renewable energy and spends millions on lobbying and propaganda which opposes the existence of climate change.
(www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/stop-esso)
Environmental Impact
BP and Exxon Mobile are criticised for their involvement in the rupture and consequent oil spill from an Alaskan pipeline that poured 1000's of litres of crude oil into the Arctic Ocean.
BP is also heavily criticised for pushing ahead with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which cuts through Borjomi National Park in Georgia. The pipe also follows a fault line in Turkey where landslips are common, thus creating a major risk of oil spills.
Chevron is criticised for gas flaring in Nigeria.
ConocoPhillips was rated the USA's 3rd worst air polluter and it's Humber refinery topped the UK emission table for benzene.
Shell is criticised for heading the Sakhalin II Project which will have a negative impact on the marine environment and damage the only breeding ground of the worlds population of Western Pacific Grey Whales.
Total is the 5th highest emitter of VOC's in the UK. VOC's are said to cause high levels of ground level ozone implicated in lung damage.
Human and Animal Rights Abuses
BP was named one of the 10 worse companies by Multinational Monitor (http://multinationalmonitor.org/) due to the fatal explosions in 2005 which killed 15 of its workers at a refinery in Texas. It inherited a plant with health and safety problems but did not invest to improve the working conditions - instead it order a 15% cut in fixed costs.
BP also funded research at Huntingdon Life Sciences that involved feeding constituents of PVC to rats to see if their offspring were affected.
ConocoPhillips successfully lobbied the Indonesia government to open up the protected forest lands of the indigenous people so it could undertake mining operations there.
Esso's pet tiger ‘Tessa' ended her life in a bare concrete enclosure in a shopping mall in the Caribbean after she attacked her keeper.
ExxonMobil has been criticised by Amnesty International for taking land from poor farmers, giving them no compensation and creating deals that have financial incentives to ignore human rights.
Chevron is being sued by 5 indigenous groups for environmental damage. The company dumped 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water used in the refinery process directly into the watercourses of the North-eastern Ecuador. This has caused drinking and bathing water to be contaminated for 1000's of miles. Subsequently childhood leukaemia has increased to 4 times the national average, with birth defects and miscarriage rates also higher than average. It's been described as the worst case of oil pollution on earth and the second biggest environmental disaster in human history after Chenobyl.
Chevron is also fighting a lawsuit which claims one of Shell's subsidiary companies had supported military attacks on protestor in the Niger Delta.
In 2005 PETA People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked Chevron to replace 5 of its most common animal tests with cruelty free substitutes. It refused despite shareholder resolutions supporting PETA's request.
A Chevron subsidiary in Angola refused to recognise a trade union that represented 1000 workers.
Murphy Oil is criticised for operating in oppressive regimes and for failing to follow its own emergency procedures when hurricane Katrina hit, causing a million gallon oil spill over one of the affected communities.
In November 2005 a Nigerian court ordered Shell to stop flaring gas in the Iwherekan community in the Niger Delta. The court found that the gas flaring damaged human health and property, and was described as a human rights violation. Shell has not ceased the gas flaring, despite the courts ruling and has launched an appeal opposing the courts verdict.
Investment in Renewable Energy
Friends of the Earth believes that when comparing major oil companies, the most important comparison to make is what proportion of each companies investments are being put into developing renewable energy sources rather then finding more fossil fuel to burn.
Sadly even the companies in vesting most in renewable energy are spending over fifteen times as much money looking for new sources of oil.
Company % Investment in Renewable Energy
BP 5.7 %
Chevron 2.8 %
Shell 1.1 %
Murco 0 %
Exxon 0 %
(Source Ethical consumer magazine)
Revenue Transparency
Save the Children has rated oil companies in terms of how open they are about their revenue payments. Revenue payments have the potential to improve people's lives if spent on public investments in health and education. However, currently the huge revenues from the oil industry fuel corruption, exacerbate conflicts and weaken economic development. Save the Children argue for transparency because this is a prerequisite to accountability - which leads to effective revenue use.
Rating on Revenue Transparency by Save the Children
Most transparent: Shell
Chevron
BP
ExxonMobil
ConocoPhillips
Least transparent: Total
Ranking the Oil Companies
Ethical Consumer's Ethiscore ranks them from best no' 1 to worst at no' 9
1. Murco
2. Jet
3. Elf
4. Shell
5. Total
6. BP
7. Texaco
8. Esso
9. Mobil
The Sierra Club is a US environmental organisation that also rates oil companies. It has produced a buyers guide to ethical petrol based on the companies environmental and international human-rights violations. (www.sierraclub.org/sierra/pickyourpoison/) Their rating from no'1 best to worst are;
1. BP
2. Shell
3. Chevron
4. Exxon Mobil
5. Conoco Phillips
Morrisons, Tesco and ASDA supermarkets are also major petrol retailers. For the ethical consumer they are not really an option because they buy oil from a range of the above companies (and the supermarkets wider trading activities). Sainsbury's is slightly better because it is believed to supply only BP petrol.
Which is the most ethical choice?
In writing this article all I've learnt is how much worse driving is than I usually allow myself to acknowledge. As Druids aware of relationships and interconnection we must try to reduce our car use for many more reasons than global warming. Choosing a company may be just the choice between a rock or a hard place and your choice will depend on what matters most to you but
If its investment in renewable energy : BP or Sainsbury's
If its revenue transparency : Shell
It its international boycott calls : ConocoPhillips
If its environmental impact : BP
If its human and animal rights abuses : Murco
