UNTHINKABLE

Suppose there were an American-based multinational corporation which figured out how to make
billions of dollars from releasing pure carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now, suppose that
company had spent decades trying to determine how much temperature rise these CO2 emissions
would cause. Once that company decided that the temperature would rise to unimaginable levels
across the planet they then decided it was profitable to proceed anyway, since there was no law
against it. Who could stop them? Who would have the legal authority to intervene?
What if the company spent millions of dollars to avoid regulation and then denied that it knew that it
was going to cause temperature rise? What if it bought scientists and politicians to say that it was
impossible for man to significantly influence the temperature of the planet so there would be no
conventional legal remedy?
Would this be a crime against humanity? Would this crime be worse than terrorism if it resulted in
the destruction of the human race? Would this crime deserve a different kind of punishment and
would it require a new form of legal infrastructure to prevent it from happening? Could the people
who were planning this crime be incarcerated and charged with a new category of offense?
Could a country complicit with this offense for profit suffer economic sanctions? Would it be
appropriate to reward a country with significant economic benefits for interdicting such a crime?
My friends, this is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today and that company's name is
EXXON and that country's name is Indonesia.

NATUNA CO2 PROJECT

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Natuna_gas_field
In 1985 while I was working for Tenneco in Indonesia. I evaluated the Natuna Gas
Field Project in the South China Sea for possible lease participation using EXXON'S

own data. This EXXON field is one of the largest remaining undeveloped gas fields in
the world and consists of an ancient reef complex roughly 9 miles wide and 15 miles
long. Development has been delayed for over 43 years by poor economics and
problems with the lease terms and territorial disputes by China, Philippines, Vietnam,
Brunei and Malaysia. It is more than 70% CO2 with significant levels of poisonous
hydrogen sulfide H2S. Reportedly, the field could eventually recover 45 Trillion
Cubic Feet of Methane Gas (TCF) but would have to emit or dispose of over 150 TCF
of CO2. By 2007, EXXON claimed to have spent about $400 million with
PERTAMINA, the government oil company, spending an additional $60 million on
assessment and feasibility studies.
By 2009, Exxon had been wrangling over the terms and validity of its lease agreement
with PERTAMINA for decades. However, in 2010, PERTAMINA abruptly canceled
its lease for failure of Exxon to perform its obligations. Nevertheless, a fortuitous visit
to Jakarta, Indonesia that year by Pres. Barack Obama, renegotiated the terms and
sealed the deal for EXXON with the signing of a Heads of Agreement(HoA).
Given these conditions, it has been estimated that it would cost over $40 billion to
develop, so it might not even be profitable when oil prices are above $100 per barrel.
Early calculations showed that deliberately bubbling the CO2 to the surface or a
blowout could suffocate anyone not wearing oxygen an apparatus within a 10-mile
radius. We were told that neither PERTAMINA nor the Indonesian Government had
any problem with letting the CO2 just escape into the atmosphere, but that was not OK
with me.
EXXON also evaluated the feasibility of bubbling the gas in the deep ocean but
concluded that the H2S would create a toxic plume to marine organisms and within 10
years the CO2 would all be released from the ocean into the atmosphere.
It is a wrong to assume that oil companies had little knowledge of the impacts of CO2
in the air back then. In fact, the industry was very profitably injecting carbon dioxide
into W. Texas fields after 1972 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in a method called
CO2 flooding. By 2005, the industry claimed it had produced a billion barrels of CO2
enhanced oil in the US by this method.

Source: Inside Climate News (August 10 2015)

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/Exxons-Business-Ambition-Collided-with-ClimateChange-Under-a-Distant-Sea

According to a Global CCS Institute 2010 estimate, at full capacity, East Natuna Field
development plans call for CO2 production rates of 4.2 BCF per day or 1.5 TCF per
year. This would require production, capture, injection, storage and monitoring and
maintenance for at least 75 years.
This is equivalent to all of the annual emissions of greenhouse gasses in Canada. We
were told 100,000 trees would have to be planted per year to compensate for the
amount of CO2 emitted.
I told the company the gas field was not economic, bad for the environment and too
dangerous. I recommended against it because it would have become the worlds
largest single point source of CO2 and the amount of CO2 emitted would be twice as
much as an equivalent amount of coal. That is after considering the combustion of the
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) the methane would be converted into for transport. It
was assumed that all of the CO2 would need to be flared to remove the hydrogen
sulfide even though the CO2 is not combustible. I also told them it could not be
profitable under any probable scenario. Apparently, James Hansen did some
consulting work for EXXON about the same time and gave EXXON the same advice.
In short, development could start a war after which production would overheat the
planet.

Given the scale of this Natuna Project. it could well have been the beginning of
EXXONS intense interest in the link between CO2 and global warming. Attempts to
justify this ill-conceived project could have led to EXXONs much publicized, active
role in promoting Global Warming denial. Needless to say, EXXON to this day is
continuing to promote this insane Natuna project and denial of man-made climate
change It is still looking for additional partners more than 40 years after the fields
discovery and plans to resume development in 2017.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102015/Exxons-Business-Ambition-Collidedwith-Climate-Change-Under-a-Distant-Sea
In Jan 2016, PERTAMINA proposed to combine the operational planning and logistics of 5 separate
blocks in the Natuna Islands together while keeping the lease contracts essentially the same. This
would result in even greater total gas production and potentially much more CO2 to be disposed of
in the atmosphere and permanently underground.
So, how do you stop a corporation or a nation determined to pollute the atmosphere with huge
amounts of carbon dioxide for profit? First you have to try to convince the UN or other international
body that there are cases where pollution must be stopped for humanities survival. Next you must
consider giving enforcement powers to international treaties like the Paris Accords. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be tasked with identifying industrial
projects which represent a genuine threat to climate change goals. The United Nations Peace and
Security Forces could be authorized by the Security Council to take action under NATO if all security
members are threatened by the decisions of a few bad actors.
Appeals could also be made for unilateral action. We must remember that the Congress of the
United States authorized $98 million for military training and the aerial bombing of rebels to protect
Oxys Cano Limon pipeline in Columbia in 2002. It is probably no coincidence that Saravena, the
headquarters for this operation, was the same base from which Oxy mistakenly launched a
helicopter attack on the village of Santo Domingo which killed 18 people including 9 children. If our
military resources can be used to protect the assets of fossil fuel developers, then it seems only
fitting that the same resources could be used to threaten the development of some fossil fuel
resources which threaten the health of our planet.
Also, we are already seeing our military bases along the coasts threatened by rising sea level. Some
of these bases in North Carolina have already requested funds to build fortifications to hold back the
sea. The Republican led Congress of course has refused to authorize and money for these efforts. In
fact, they have prevented any debate on these issues. If companies persist, it might not be difficult to
convince the military that they must intervene to maintain some bases.
If all else fails, we could have the US threaten to bomb the facility in the South China Sea before the
CO2 plant is constructed. This is not a huge leap since we recently sent three generations of nuclear
bombers over Chinese claimed islands in the South China Sea. Such a show of force could be used not
just to intimidate China but to send a strong message to Indonesia and EXXON that we will not allow
these kinds of reckless projects to proceed.

The worlds governing bodies must find the collective will to prevent these dangerous greenhouse
gases from ever being developed or released if we are to avoid the worst effects of global climate
change. These global risks are too great to justify any motive. To allow the largest corporations to
proceed with these insane projects for marginal profits would be the height of folly. Failure for
governments to threaten military action and letting sheer greed dictate the decisions will virtually
guarantee catastrophic consequences for the planet.
David Lincoln
Eco-Alert
9/7/16