Amazon Watch is issuing a new call to the consumers and companies in the U.S. and around the world: End Amazon Crude! With the release of a new investigative report, an animated video by long-time ally and Pulitzer Prize winning animator Mark Fiore, an infographic, and a petition to demand that refineries in the U.S. stop sourcing crude from the rainforest, the campaign to End Amazon Crude kicks off with a bang, and we want you to join us in this important call to action.
In From Well to Wheel: The Social, Environmental, and Climate Costs of Amazon Crude, Amazon Watch tracks crude extracted from oil wells in the western Amazon rainforest to refineries in the United States and ultimately into cars and trucking fleets across the country.
This is the first thorough analysis of Amazon crude from its source to its final end use, and it demonstrates the devastating environmental, social and climate impacts of oil drilling in the global treasure that is the Amazon.
KEY REPORT FINDINGS:
- A thriving market for Amazon crude drives the ongoing expansion of oil operations into some of the Amazon rainforest’s most pristine regions, which has devastating impacts for the Amazon’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples, refinery communities in the United States, and our global climate.
- Drilling in the Amazon has a triple carbon impact: the burning of the oil, the emissions released when cutting down the rainforest, and the destruction of the world’s largest carbon sink.
- Oil operations have particularly toxic impacts on the health of indigenous communities. In one oil-producing region of the Peruvian Amazon, 98 percent of children in indigenous communities have high levels of toxic metals in their blood as a direct result of oil extraction waste products in their environment.
- California’s refineries are the worst offenders, processing an average of 170,978 barrels (almost 7.2 million gallons) of Amazon crude every day. The state processes roughly 60 percent of all exports of Amazon crude from Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia and 74 percent of those that come to the United States.
- Every large public and private vehicle fleet in California uses diesel that is at least partly derived from Amazon crude, as do many outside of the state and country.
