The Costs of Amazon Crude Oil

Stand.earth contributed research to the Amazon Watch report "From Well to Wheel: The Social, Environmental, and Climate Costs of Amazon Crude."

KEY FINDINGS:

  • A thriving market for Amazon crude rationalizes 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, frontline communities in the United States, and our global climate.
  • Drilling in the Amazon has a triple carbon impact: emissions from cutting down the rainforest to build well sites, pipelines, and access roads, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere by destroying the world’s largest carbon sink, and burning the oil.
  • Oil operations have particularly toxic impacts on the health of indigenous communities. In one oil producing region of the Peruvian Amazon, 98% of children in indigenous communities have high levels of toxic metals in their blood.
  • California’s refineries are the worst offenders, processing an average of 170,978 barrels (7.2 million gallons) of Amazon crude every day. The state processes roughly 60% of all exports of Amazon crude from Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia, and 74% of those that come to the United States.
  • Every large public and private fleet in California uses diesel that is at least partly derived from Amazon crude, as do many outside of the state and country.