ECOSYSTEM DESTRUCTION

Some places of irreplaceable natural value, like the Arctic Refuge, should be off limits to oil and gas development. Yet ExxonMobil spent a staggering $7.9 billion last year on exploration and development, with much of it in pristine ecosystems, such as the gray whale habitat off of Russia's Sakhalin Island.

One of Africa's last untouched rainforests are threatened by ExxonMobil's Chad Cameroon pipeline, which is financed by US taxpayer dollars via the World Bank, while the company's proposed McKenzie pipeline may jeopardize important forests in Alaska and Canada. On the other side of the world, ExxonMobil is pursuing pipeline construction from Papua New Guinea to the Australian mainland, threatening to destroy the highlands of Papua New Guinea and Australia's awesome Cape York Wilderness.

Astonishingly, thirteen years after the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, ExxonMobil has yet to pay the $5 billion fine levied against the company, successfully overturning the punitive damage award last year.

ExxonMobil must pay for all - and clean up all - the ecological and human destruction it has caused in Alaska and around the world.

But ExxonMobil is not done with Alaska. The company supports opening up the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling. The Arctic Refuge is one of America's last wild places, untouched by roads, buildings, or any kind of human activity. The coastal plain supports large populations of wildlife, including caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, and snow geese.

The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is also sacred to the Gwich'in, the "people of the caribou." They depend on the caribou for food, shelter, and as a link to their traditional way of life. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimates that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would damage or displace up to 40% of the caribou herd, and therefore threaten the Gwich'in way of life.

In addition to the Arctic, ExxonMobil is gunning for other wild places. The company wants to build a pipeline from oil fields in Chad through the central African rainforest to Cameroon. The proposed Chad- Cameroon pipeline would stretch 650 miles along the banks of the Sanga River. The pipeline would start in Chad, where the company proposes to drill up to 300 oil wells. These proposed oil fields would be in the heart of Chad's food-producing region, where even an incidental oil spill could be devastating.

The pipeline would then cut a path across the rich biologically diverse Atlantic Littoral Forest and terminate on Cameroon's Kribi Coast, itself a delicate, biologically diverse marine environment. The region is home to several threatened animal species, including chimpanzees, gorillas, forest elephants, and the endangered black rhino.

At least forty-three Bakola Pygmy settlements are located within a mile and a half of the proposed pipeline easement and on or near its access road. The Bakola are particularly reliant on the health of local forests, wildlife, land, and water. Finally, ExxonMobil's wants to drill for oil and gas off the coast of Sakhalin - a Russian island north of Japan - threatening the Western Pacific gray whale. The seas around Sakhalin are treacherous and frozen for a large part of the year, raising grave concerns about the potential for a serious oil spill. Despite the risks, the company wants to drill in a narrow strip near the shore off Sakhalin where endangered gray whales - there are only 100 left - spend 5 months of the year feeding. A proposed ExxonMobil pipeline will also pass through streams containing sensitive salmon spawning grounds. From Alaska to Africa to Asia, the folks who gave us the Exxon Valdez want to keep on giving.

Find out more:
www.uspirg.org
www.pacificenvironment.org
www.seen.org

The Stop ExxonMobil Alliance is a broad association of rights groups working to influence ExxonMobil's behavior in the human rights, environment, governance and community relations areas. Alliance members support each others' demands but do not have expertise or take public position on all the issue areas.