Chevron puts it’s head in the sand over Australian environmental concerns?

Wilderness Society representative Josh Coates along with representatives from Nigeria, Burma, USA, and other countries was on the 26th of May 2010 denied legal access with proxies to the Chevron AGM in Houston Texas.

This silencing of a valid Chevron shareholder representative contradicts Chevron's own policies and is in potential violation of corporate governance laws.

Wilderness Society representative Josh Coates (back row 3rd from left) with international representatives. including an Australian Indigenous traditional custodian, holding legal proxy documentation, after being refused entry to Chevron AGM. Photo: Jonathon McIntosh

The Wilderness Society was in Houston to draw attention to the role of Chevron, BP, Shell, BHP Billiton and Woodside in threatening the internationally significant Kimberley coast by proposing to build a major LNG facility in the largest humpback whale nursery area in the world.

The Wilderness Society was helped in traveling to the meeting by the True Cost of Chevron network, consisting of people and organizations impacted by environmental and social injustices the world over.

Seven members of the True Cost of Chevron network were (seemingly arbitrarily) allowed into the meeting, but were later ejected and one person arrested, but not before they conveyed a strong message regarding Chevron’s lack of corporate responsibility and delivered ‘The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report’ written by dozens of authors from 16 countries. The Wilderness Society contributed a chapter to the report, which focuses on the impacts of the proposed LNG industrial gas site on the Kimberley coast. The report and more information about the network is available at www.truecostofchevron.com

Those people who were denied legal access to the meeting, including the Wilderness Society representative, staged a peaceful sit in to draw attention to the fact that Chevron was refusing their legal right to convey their concerns to shareholders and the Chevron board. Four of these representatives, all US citizens, were arrested during the sit in by police backing the Chevron security. Chevron argued that the proxies were in some way not proper – however identically formatted proxy documents of other shareholders were used to gain entry by other individuals on the day.

Josh Coates from The Wilderness Society said:

Examples of the coverage being received by the Australian Wilderness Society representative in Houston:

KPFT radio (featured for the last half hour of the program)

The Houston press
Images from the Chevron AGM

In this you tube video you can see the arrests and hear from The Wilderness Society and also a Kimberley Indigenous custodian in Houston. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNLP-RLiSzY

KPFA morning show (San Francisco and syndicated - Kimberley story in last half hour of the show)

Statement and question intended for the Chevron AGM 2010

My name is Josh Coates, I work with The Wilderness Society – one of Australia’s largest environmental protection organizations. I am here to inform you all about the huge environmental cost of some of Chevron’s proposed activities in my country.

The Kimberley region of north-west Australia is one of the world’s last truly wild places and a region of global environmental and cultural significance.

Chevron is currently partnering with other companies to impose a LNG processing facility on the pristine Kimberley coast at a place called James Price Point.

The proposed facility and associated port would impact heavily and unacceptably on:

•  the largest humpback whale nursery area in the world;
•  a world class coral reef province;
•  a geological heritage site;
•  a region of cultural significance to the Indigenous traditional owners;
•  and an area that is a last refuge for special species found nowhere else in the world.

This proposal represents a ‘thin edge of the wedge’ for the industrialization of one of the world’s most important large scale functioning ecosystems.

There are other economically and technically feasible solutions, solutions that in the past Chevron has expressed a preference for. I call on the company to withdraw its support for the destruction of the Kimberly’s marine wonderland by saying an emphatic ‘NO’ to processing gas onshore in the Kimberley.

The Montara offshore drilling environmental disaster, which spewed oil and gas into the Timor sea off the Kimberley coast for nine weeks in late 2009, and the similar ongoing disaster off the US coast show us that the offshore drilling industry is not safe and needs to be completely reconsidered. Furthermore, putting the Kimberley coast at further risk by processing gas onshore in this region is simply not acceptable.

I ask: why, when there are environmentally preferable options available, does Chevron continue to support the destruction of a wilderness area comparable only to areas such as the remaining un-impacted Amazon rainforest, the Arctic or Antarctic in terms of wilderness area, quality, and environmental significance?