The Petra Nova CCS plant began operating in 2016 at a coal-fired power plant in Texas and shut down less than four years later due to a plunge in oil prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. It restarted on Sept. 5, 2022. (Credit: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle, via Getty Images).

This story was published in partnership with Vox and was supported by the

This spring, Democrats wrapped up a nearly three-year

 into the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate disinformation, and asked the Department of Justice to pick up where they left off. In House and Senate Democrats’

 and hearing, investigators concluded that major oil companies had not only misled the public on climate change for decades, but also were continuing to misinform them about the industry’s preferred climate “solutions”— particularly biofuels and carbon capture.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who spearheaded the investigation, also accused oil companies of “obstructing”  it, submitting few documents, and redacting much of what they did send. One ExxonMobil employee who spoke with Drilled and Vox under condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation described what the company sent as “a truly random assortment of unimportant documents.”

But there was at least one notable exception: a report detailing the company’s projections for the future of carbon capture technology.

 read a New York Times newsletter recently

 on Politico’s website or heard it on one of its podcasts, or listened to

, you may have noticed the industry’s relentlessly positive marketing of carbon capture, which aims to collect and store CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial and fossil fuel extraction facilities, so they don’t add to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said carbon capture might be necessary to reduce the emissions of certain “hard to abate” sectors like steel, concrete, and some chemical manufacturing, but noted that in the best-case scenario, with carbon capture technology working flawlessly and deployed at large scale, it could only account for a little

That hasn’t stopped major oil companies

 that carbon capture and storage “will be essential for helping society achieve net-zero emissions,” that they are delivering “carbon capture for American industry,” working on reducing emissions in their own businesses (also referred to as “carbon intensity”), and delivering

 “heavy industry with low emissions.”

 But internal documents obtained during the federal investigation, as well as information that industry whistleblowers shared with Drilled and Vox, reveal an industry that is decidedly more realistic about the emissions-reduction potential of carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, than it presents publicly.

Companies touted the potential of CCS publicly, as they downplayed the technology internally.

In 2018, the oil and gas company Shell released an

, a forecast that served as a standard for the rest of the oil industry, in which it laid out what

 a “radical” new approach on climate. Beginning in 1965, Shell pioneered the now-common practice of “scenario planning” for oil companies: mapping out what the industry and the world are likely to look like in the future. Other oil companies will still often compare their scenarios to Shell’s.

 was included in the most recent batch of documents handed over to Senate and House investigators. In it, ExxonMobil compared its future projections with Shell’s rosiest forecast for the energy transition. Buried in a chart in that projection is ExxonMobil’s belief at the time about the global potential for CCS.

Even without the massive stamp (which marks this page as part of the set of documents obtained by Congressional subpoena), these graphs would be difficult to read. The one on the left compares the projected number of CCS units in Shell’s “Sky” scenario versus the number projected by ExxonMobil, while the graph on the right compares the two companies’ forecasts for future CO2 emissions.

But squinting at the numbers reveals some shocking takeaways about Exxon’s confidence in CCS. While Shell’s optimistic projection envisions 10,000 large-scale CCS facilities operational by 2070, with more than 2500 facilities by 2050, Exxon predicts somewhere between 250 and 500 facilities by 2050.

Exxon’s 2018 projections align with what critics of CCS have been saying for years. In its 

, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a nonprofit, non-partisan think tank that produces market-based research on the energy transition, states: “It’s worth noting that not one single CCS project has ever reached its target CO2 capture rate.”

Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson said that because it also requires energy and materials to function, CCS attached to a fossil-fueled power plant is worse for the climate than replacing fossil energy with renewables.

“They actually increase carbon dioxide emissions by doing this, in addition to increasing air pollution,” he said, referencing 

 that does the math on the lifecycle CO2 emissions of various carbon capture scenarios. Even when CCS is powered by wind, Jacobson said it’s not worth doing, from a climate perspective. “If you just used wind to replace coal in the first place, you’d get a higher reduction in CO2 emissions,” he said.

And oil giants themselves have been hedging on the technology for years, despite marketing its potential. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed requiring that power plants install CCS in its rules for power plants, for example, both fossil fuel companies and

 expressed far less faith in the technology in their public comments on the rule than they have in their ads about carbon capture. In Exxon’s public comment, the company

 to reduce its requirements around capture efficiency from 95 percent to 75 percent, which is more in line with the actual performance of existing CCS projects.

The EPA rule “was going to mandate either using CCS on a power plant in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to take some action that would be equivalent to adding CCS, and the response from industry was ‘hey the tech is really not proven,’” David Schlissel, director of resource planning analysis for IEEFA, said. “Many, many comments from oil companies and utilities, in response to both the initial EPA rule and the current one, were saying this tech really doesn’t work.” Even though the agency weakened its requirements around CCS, some of those same entities, alongside 25 attorneys general who are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, have 

 the Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay on the power plant rules, again arguing that the technology isn’t ready for prime time.

Exxon’s low internal projections for CCS back in 2018 map to the company’s own challenges with the technology. To date, the only “successful” carbon capture project Exxon claims is its 

 in Wyoming. The Shute Creek facility is often referenced by the industry in general as a large and long-standing CCS project. On paper, it’s responsible for around 40 percent of the total carbon emissions ever captured in the world. But the details tell a more complicated story.

According to Exxon’s own disclosures and 

 conducted by IEEFA in 2022, only around 3 percent of the carbon captured in LaBarge (roughly 6 million tonnes) has been permanently sequestered underground. Of the rest of the 240 million tonnes of carbon emitted over the facility’s first 35 years in operation, half has been sold to various oilfield operators for enhanced oil recovery— a process by which oil companies inject carbon underground to get more oil out. Approximately 120 million tonnes, meanwhile, 

When asked to comment for this story about its 2018 scenario plan and overall record on CCS, ExxonMobil sent the following statement by email: “False narratives that downplay our CCS efforts deliberately fail to recognize the strides we’re making in our Low Carbon Solutions business. Referencing one possible scenario from over six years ago does not represent our business outlook. We continuously evaluate our business plan based on market conditions.”

 as its most current thinking on the potential of carbon capture. That report states: “Carbon capture is a proven and safe technology that reduces emissions from manufacturing and power generation.”

But in commenting on its scenario plan, Exxon’s spokesperson focused on “market conditions” and its shifting “business outlook,” not the technology itself. The business outlook and market conditions for CCS have changed because of the increased tax credit for CCS that oil majors, including Exxon, lobbied for—and, according to 

 subpoenaed by federal investigators, heavily influenced. Senator Joe Manchin 

 as part of the negotiations that saw the Biden Administration’s proposed “Build Back Better” legislation morph into the Inflation Reduction Act. The final IRA made major changes to the 45Q tax credit, which started out in 2008 paying $10 for every metric ton of carbon sequestered, then increased to $50 per metric ton in 2018; after the IRA, it now pays up to $85 per metric ton and up to $60 for carbon stored and used for enhanced oil recovery, or EOR. Suddenly, EOR, a technique for getting more oil out of the ground, is a “climate solution” called CCS and CCS is profitable.

What’s more, there’s little to no oversight in the legislation for companies getting taxpayer money for doing CCS. The IRA nominally requires companies to verify their claims to the credit, but aside from some 

 to ensure condensed CO2 doesn’t wind up in groundwater, the EPA is not verifying how much carbon is actually sequestered by these projects.

“There is no cap on 45Q and stored emissions are entirely self-reported,” Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science & Environmental Health Network, said.

When asked about verification of carbon stored under the 45Q tax credit, the EPA told Drilled and Vox that it “does not implement the Section 45Q tax credit program and is not privy to taxpayer data,” and that questions about how tax claims are verified should be directed to the IRS. The IRS confirmed that it ensures companies claiming the credit have filed paperwork outlining their claims, including a lifecycle analysis, but that it does not have the scientific or technical expertise to verify that the amount of carbon claimed is actually being permanently sequestered.

“What the IPCC actually said in its mitigation report was that carbon capture might be necessary for hard-to-abate industries, but that it’s one of the most expensive options and it only equates to small emissions reductions,” said Paul Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and advisor to the Bold Alliance, a nonprofit network of frontline communities focused on protecting land and water. “So we’re doing the most expensive, least applicable thing first rather than cheapest easiest things first at great expense to taxpayers and with no analysis of net climate benefit.”

“We’re doing the most expensive, least applicable thing first rather than cheapest easiest things first at great expense to taxpayers and with no analysis of net climate benefit.” — Paul Blackburn, environmental lawyer and advisor to the Bold Alliance

Even before the creation of a remarkably generous tax credit, and despite their own internal projections or challenges with the technology, oil majors painted a rosy picture of CCS starting in the later half of the 2010s. Emails obtained by federal investigators show that Shell pulled together an 

 to promote CCS, while BP worked with the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative to develop what it called 

Exxon, meanwhile, began promoting itself as a leader in carbon capture.

In the last five years, Exxon produced multiple pro-CCS 

comparing the carbon capture potential at industrial plants to the carbon sequestration of 

describes ExxonMobil as “the company that believes that carbon capture technologies are critical for lowering global CO2 emissions.”

The oil major even worked on a series of 

 from 2019, Exxon executives asked the creative team working on the kids’ series to steer away from the idea that carbon is bad or that carbon capture is difficult. “De-emphasize concept that catching carbon is difficult or hard,” the feedback reads.

Yet that is precisely the company’s experience with CCS, according to several current and former Exxon staffers who agreed to speak with Drilled and Vox on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Some of them were involved in the early days of researching CCS as a potential climate solution at Exxon, which they said only began in earnest in 2018, the same year that the 45Q tax credit first increased.

The company’s experience before then, the sources said, was entirely focused on enhanced oil recovery — the process of injecting CO2 into a separate well to increase enough pressure in a reservoir to push additional oil out of a production well. While enhanced oil recovery, or EOR, does sequester carbon — some of it stays underground after it's been injected —

 the process could release 40 percent of the CO2 back into the air, and the oil it helps to get out of the ground also generates CO2 emissions when it’s burned.

Exxon is not the only one that embraced EOR for years before repositioning it as a climate solution. The industry has known for decades that compressed carbon works really well to vacuum up any remaining oil from porous rock, but it’s expensive to store and transport carbon. The industry’s embrace of natural gas helped drive down costs a bit: gas often comes out of the ground bringing quite a bit of CO2 with it. That CO2 needs to be stripped out to make natural gas, a process called“gas sweetening,” leaving companies with excess CO2.

Still, the process of storing and transporting it remained expensive, so it didn’t always make financial sense to do EOR. Now, with investor-owned oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell hurtling toward an inevitable decline in production rates — an inflection point referred to as “peak oil” — they need EOR more than ever. By rebranding it as a climate solution and tying it to a tax credit, they’ve not just made the process cheaper, they’ve created a new revenue stream — called Low Carbon Solutions at Exxon and Shell, Gas & Low Carbon Energy at BP, and Lower Carbon at Chevron.

The 45Q tax credit revenue will also make it feasible for these new business units to supply carbon capture where it might genuinely be needed, on facilities with hard-to-abate emissions, like concrete, steel, and ammonia plants. But the vast majority of carbon that US taxpayers are paying oil companies to capture will either be going toward generating more oil, or would have greater emissions reductions benefits had the companies opted not to drill for gas in the first place.

According to the International Energy Agency

, using “naturally occurring” carbon—the CO2 that comes up with methane as part of natural gas, for example—in EOR, as opposed to “anthropogenic CO2,” the emissions captured from a facility like a power plant or factory, “clearly provides no benefit in terms of emissions intensity.” Absent the drilling in the first place, there would be no CO2 or methane emissions in those cases.

In the United States, more than 70 percent of the CO2 injected underground as part of the EOR process is from natural sources. That’s true of the Exxon’s showcase facility—the Shute Creek facility in LaBarge, Wyoming—as well.The CO2 source there is the gas that’s being drilled. ExxonMobil calls this “anthropogenic CO2,” but when pressed, a spokesperson told Drilled it’s generated by the separation process. In other words, absent the gas drilling, there would be no CO2 to capture at the site in the first place.

Despite that, when ExxonMobil talks about itself in PR materials as the 

 and the fact that it has captured more CO2 than any other company in the world, it is

, which has been in operation since 1986.

 on CCS and other industry-friendly “climate solutions,” from 1986 to 2008, LaBarge reinjected about 400,000 tonnes of CO2 a year back into the reservoir from which it came, and vented 180 million cubic feet of CO2 per day from the facility’s smokestacks. In 2008, it was ordered by the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to reduce its vented CO2 emissions, which it did by building out a carbon capture system that redirected CO2 into pipelines for enhanced oil recovery.

 from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that LaBarge was selling half of its captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery and venting the rest. This means that millions of tonnes of carbon the company claimed to have “captured” were ultimately emitted into the atmosphere.

Climate scientists say CCS connected to fossil fuel use or production delivers little benefit when it comes to tackling climate change, period.

“It doesn’t  make sense to use CCS to prolong our use of fossil fuels, especially to produce electricity,” David Ho, professor at University of Hawaii and senior researcher at Columbia University, said. “The argument in favor of enhanced oil recovery is often that if they weren’t using this captured CO2 they’d be using some other CO2. But I don’t think you can call anything where you’re getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution.”

Yet, so far, oil majors have struggled to deploy CCS technology in any other capacity. “When we talk about the failure of CCS, we generally talk about capturing not storage, but when you look at capacity and how much has actually been sequestered, it’s very little,” Ho said.

When CO2 is actually sequestered underground, there’s no guarantee it stays there. “CO2 has a way of moving through the air, of leaking through pipelines and because we have no cradle to grave tracking, we have no way of actually knowing how much is leaking, how much is really being collected, how much is hitting the wellhead, and how much is really staying underground,” Raffensperger said.

That’s not just concerning from a climate perspective, but from a public health perspective as well. Raffensperger noted that the pipelines built to transport condensed carbon from oil fields to storage facilities, or to other oil fields for EOR, are surrounded by 

“These are not your grandmother's pipelines,” Raffensperger said. “They could be lethal. We talk about the kill zone or a fatality zone around a CO2 pipeline. We don't talk about that with oil and gas pipelines. These are uniquely dangerous and underregulated.”

Following a 2020 CO2 leak and explosion in 

that abruptly stopped cars on roadways, caused widespread dizziness and nausea, and sent several residents to the hospital, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration began looking into rules for CO2 pipelines. They were set to finalize that rule this summer, pending review by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but that deadline has been 

 to fall 2024. The lack of finalized safety regulations has not stopped the permitting of CO2 pipelines, though. The Summit pipeline, a massive project that would carry carbon across five states, just got the go ahead in June 2024 for the first step of its construction process in Iowa: 

through eminent domain to make way for the pipeline.

Carbon capture and storage is a fantasy—and taxpayers are footing the bill.

According to current and former Exxon employees, the company’s efforts to explore the “S” part of the CCS equation—storage, or sequestration—only began when it pulled together a team of technical experts to look for weaknesses in a 2018 

“They thought the USGS was overly optimistic [about the potential of CCS] and they wanted us to basically bring industry technical expertise in to tell them their projections were overblown,” one Exxon staffer said. The team brought together to study CCS was then tasked with running an experiment to see if it was even possible to permanently store captured carbon. When the study showed that it was indeed possible, current and former Exxon staffers told Drilled and Vox the company’s executives were “surprised.”

To truly sell CCS as a climate solution, Exxon had to show that storage at scale was feasible. Former employees told us that at the end of the last decade, executives came up with a prioritized list of the company’s export and import terminals and refineries where it might be relatively easy to attach CCS. As of this year, none of those projects have been built (though the company did 

 in late 2023 that it was working on a fuel-cell-powered carbon capture and hydrogen project at its Rotterdam refinery, one of the options on that list).

While it hasn’t managed to build commercial scale carbon storage itself, Exxon did 

acquire enhanced oil recovery company Denbury

 in 2023, which brought 1300 miles of CO2 pipelines and 15 onshore carbon storage sites under Exxon’s control. Again, this system is focused on enhanced oil recovery.

“CCS is a proven and safe technology that experts agree is pivotal to achieving net zero,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said in response to a request for comment for this story. “We're making progress in our Low Carbon Solutions business, with current plans to capture and permanently store more CO2 than any other company.”

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, 

 the industry’s plan to offset its emissions with carbon capture “fantasy.”

But the U.S. government is all in on that fantasy now.

“[The carbon capture tax credit] 45Q is not based on net climate benefit or net CO2 reductions, it's based on gross CO2 capture,” Blackburn said. “Why would you think making carbon a commodity would reduce CO2 emissions? It’s like the opposite of carbon tax, we’re actually paying them to produce more of it.”

Ugochi Oluigbo-Anyaka, Royce Kurmelovs, and Molly Taft also contributed reporting to this story.

Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution

 Nosotros No somos terroristas. Somos ambientalistas, somos luchadores sociales. Somos de personas de la madre naturaleza.

 Vidalina Morales is in her 50s. She's soft spoken and welcoming. She's the last person you'd expect would need to say the words, we are not terrorists. But Vidalina is the president of the Asociación de Desarrollo Económico y Social, or ADES, a community based organization in El Salvador that carries out educational, environmental, and cultural projects.

The group became nationally famous for setting the alarm over mining projects that threatened El Salvador's rivers.

In 2017, their years of organizing helped secure a huge win. The government of El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban mining. Today, ye Buke, a man who likes to call himself the coolest dictator in the world, wants to reverse that ban. But first, he needs to discredit the activists who fought for it, and he's gone about it in a strange way, accusing five leaders in Hades of a decades old murder.

Over the past year, Vidalina has been fighting on their behalf, touring radio stations and TV channels to explain that these accusations are part of a smear campaign meant to weaken the environmental movement

 hasta hoy esta lucha le hemos liberado como comunidades, como organizaciones que han creído en este esfuerzo que han creído en la inocencia de nuestros compañeros y que sabemos que primeramente Dios y esta justicia salvadoreña, nuestros compañeros van a quedar libres.

Porque, pues este caso es un caso construido. Es un caso que a todas luces hay tantas irregularidades.

 All along we have fought this fight as communities, as organizations that believe in our efforts, that believe in the innocence of our comrades, and that know that first of all, God and then this Salvadoran justice system will set them free because this case is manufactured. You can see it is a case with so many irregularities

 The charges go back to El Salvador's bloody civil war. When violence tore through the country. An experience Vidalina remembers well. She was born and raised on the border between Honduras and El Salvador. In 1980, war broke out in El Salvador between the U. S. backed military dictatorship and the Frente Farogundo The FMLN, a Marxist guerrilla group.

To crush the insurgency, the army launched a terror campaign in the north of the country, where the guerrilla forces had their camps. Civilians were considered guerrilla collaborators and became targets for the army and paramilitary groups. A series of massacres occurred in the Cabanas region, killing hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children.

Several thousand survivors crossed the Lempa River and took refuge in Honduras.

 Fui testigo de cómo llegaron los refugiados a a los Hernández. Eh desnudos, porque huían,

 I witnessed refugees arriving at Los Hernandes naked because they were fleeing

 vidalina was 14 when she saw the refugees crossing the river.

 cerca enfrente de la casa de mis padres, instalaron un campamento para sanar a los heridos. Entonces yo también pude ver toda esa situación, verdad? Como cuánta persona llegaba este herida que quedaba perdida por los montes?

Porque del río lempa hacia la aldea, los Hernández hay más o menos un una hora de camino quizás más. Entonces, en ese camino, y como la gente no conocía, se perdía. Y el ejército hondureño también la masacraba la masacre en el cruce del río lempa fue fue apoyada por la el ejército salvadoreño

 Near my parents house, they set up a camp to treat the wounded, so I also saw how many people arrived wounded. Some had gotten lost in the mountains, because from the Rio Limpa to Los Hernandez, it's about an hour's walk, and people got lost.

The Honduran army also participated in the massacre. The Limpa River Massacre was supported by both the Honduran and Salvadoran armies.

 As part of a local Catholic group, she helped assist the refugees as they settled in a camp called Mesa Grande.

 Y una de las actividades era hacer mandados digamos, nos mandaban a al pueblo como nosotros le llamabamos a comprar comida, comprar pan a comprar cualquier insumo de alimentación para la para la gente esta. Y ahí colaboraba yo.

 One of the things I did was run errands. They would send us to the town to buy food, bread, any kind of food we could get for the people there, and I helped.

 That's how she got in contact with the Resistencia Nacional . One of the insurgency groups that had a strong presence in the camp

 Esa fue como la creación de conciencia que yo fui creando, digamos, en esos tiempos, pasaron esos años. Hasta el 80, siendo una joven muy joven. Eh, mi vida da un giro diferente y me acompaño con el padre de mis hijos, eh? Él, él era un compañero. Era en ese tiempo, pertenecía al ejército guerrillero mi edad era en 18 años cuando yo me acompañé con él

 this is how my awareness began to grow. During those years, 81 to 88, I went from being a young girl to my life taking a turn. I got together with the father of my children. He was a friend, and he was part of the guerrilla army. I was 18 when I got together with him.

 in 1987, groups of refugees started moving back to El Salvador. Many of them resettled in Santa Marta. One of the communities they had abandoned when they fled, many of them resettled in Santa Marta. One of the communities they had abandoned, they fled to Honduras. All of the military scorched Earth campaigns are mostly over by then.

The war was still raging, and the refugees still feared the army's operations. It made people paranoid about infiltrators and spies. That's when a murder took place in Santa Marta. The rumor spread that a woman named Maria Ines Alvarenga was an army informant. One night, guerrilla fighters dragged her out of her house in front of her children and took her to an unknown place where she was shot and buried.

Her body was never found. Three decades later, that murder would be used by prosecutors to target anti mining activists and the organization Vidalina represents. Ah, this. As land defenders around the world know very well, an unsolved criminal case can easily become a tool for a repressive government to attack its opponents and destroy their reputations.

When the state wants to crush a movement, it can make any accusation stick. That's our story today, after this quick break. I'm Yesenia Funes, and this is Drilled.

 Midelina wasn't in Santa Marta when Maria Ines Aparenga was murdered. She didn't move there until 1996, but she still lives there today. Santa Marta is in the northern department of Cabañas, about four hours from the capital, San Salvador. It's a town made of scattered houses and a deep valley, along dirt roads that cars can barely get down in the raining season.

At the center of the community, there's a small church, a soccer field, a basketball court, and a tiny pizza joint. On the hills surrounding Santa Marta, small farmers grow corn, beans, cassava, and vegetables, and the community keeps a conservation area covered by a thick forest. During her first years there, Viderina was a stay at home mom taking care of her five children.

But as they grew older, she got restless. She felt she wasn't doing anything for her community.

That's when she got in contact with Antonio Pacheco, also known as Chico, the director of Hades.

 chico, yo aquí siento que estoy haciendo nada. Yo no sé si hay alguna posibilidad de de que me involucren en en alguna acción

 chico, I feel like I'm doing nothing here. Is there a possibility you'd involve me in any action?

 Antonio Pacheco had been an area commander of the guerrilla forces. He wasn't from Santa Marta, but he decided to stay there at the end of the war when the insurgents handed over their weapons. He created Hades because the community was getting almost no support from the state. The organization provided education for the children, built the town's water supply network, and ran agricultural programs.

It also launched a community radio station called Radio Victoria.

 Radio victoria presenta a partir de esta hora. Comunidad, comunidad día al día bien.

 Over the years, I got larger and started operating in other parts of the country too.

The organization moved its offices closer to cin, the largest city in ka. Antonio Pacheco came to talk to Vidalina.

 fíjate que acá hay una problemática que un tanto me está preocupando. Y hay que enfrentarla

 he said, there's a problem here that is really worrying me and we have to tackle it.

 A Canadian company called Pacific Rim was prospecting for gold in the region. He asked her to investigate. Was it true that mining was a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring prosperity to cabañas?

Or was it a threat to the water resources and the environment, as some people were saying?

 Entonces yo le digo, bueno, yo no tengo conocimiento en tema de minería,

 So I told him, okay, I don't know anything about mining.

 Vidalina wasn't sure she had the background to address the issue, but she started learning about mining. In the early 2000s, El Salvador, like a lot of other Central American countries looking to attract multinational mining companies, set new laws that made it attractive to investors.

They promised little environmental oversight, cheap labor, and big tax breaks. Companies could pay royalties as low as one or two percent. Gold, silver, and nickel companies, most of them Canadian, rushed in. In 2000, the San Martin mine started operating in Honduras.

And in 2005, the Marlin mine opened in Guatemala. Here's a promotional video the Canadian mining company Goldcorp made about how great it is to mine in Guatemala.

 Nuestra extensión territorial menos del percent del tenorio nacional. Nuevas oportunidades. Nuevas capacidades

 In Nicaragua, the autocratic government of Daniel Ortega became a major asset for transnational mining companies. Even the environmentally friendly Costa Rica was eager to dig into its mountains before backtracking and declaring a ban on open pit mining in 2010. El Salvador was no exception. Pacific Rim purchased land and drilled for samples.

They decided to start their gold operation on a 13 square kilometer site in San Isidro. The mayor and regional politicians were vocal supporters of the mine. Vidalina met with environmental organizations in San Salvador. She talked with experts.

She went with other community members to the Valle de Siria in Honduras, where Gold Corp was running a large open pit gold mine.

 Y así fue como fuimos expandiéndolo desde el para, eh enseguida, eh, ya fuimos haciendo como una un tejido. Llegamos a las comunidades.

nosotros visitamos el valle de siria en Honduras, porque la escasez del agua, el ruido, casas, casas hendidas.

Entonces la gente quedaba impactada. Eso fue haciendo que la gente tomara conciencia y se movilizara

 and that's how we've been expanding since 2006, creating a network across communities. We went to Syria Valley because of the water scarcity. We went to Siria Valley because of the water scarcity, noise, and damaged homes there. People were shocked. They raised awareness and mobilized.

 Vidalina made up her mind. Gold mines were a major threat to the whole region. Mining operations sucked up water resources in a place where access to clean water was already a problem.

They used dangerous chemicals like cyanide to separate the gold from the rock.

If a cyanide spill occurred, it could threaten the Lenpa River, which provides 60 percent of the water resources of El Salvador. Mining companies, as you would soon discover, were bad for communities too. Dividing the population and bringing in social unrest, violence, and death.

Opposition started to mount against Pacific Rim. Addis and other organizations mobilized people in Cabanas. They organized forums where the company experts were asked tough questions by local people. Santa Marta and other communities came to San Salvador to protest and the mining company pushed back.

 nos íbamos a plantar a San salvador, a la a los diferentes ministerios al ministerio media ambiente, principalmente. Yo recuerdo que varias actividades de movilización hicimos frente al ministerio de medio ambiente frente a casa presidencial en esos tiempos también con mucho miedo, porque también si nos agarraban, pues este nos capturaban y nos metían preso

 we would station ourselves in San Salvador at different ministries, the Ministry of Environment in front of the President's house too, with a lot of fear because if they caught us, they would arrest us and throw us in prison.

 Que radio victoria es un medio de comunicación alternativo que decidida a mimos las 10, 44 minutos desde la mañana 44 minutos.

 A major tool of the resistance against mining companies was Radio Victoria, Santa Marta's community radio station. Its mix of music, news, and commentary, and its large network of local correspondents, gave the radio station a large audience across Cabañas.

 muy buenos días, amigos y amigas, gracias por escuchar radio victoria en el 91. Como siempre, es un placer enorme acompañarles.

 Radio Victoria was one of Addis main projects at the end of the war.

 that was nineteen ninety three when we first went on the air and when we moved up to victoria

 This is Christina Starr. She's from Charlotte, North Carolina. Her real name is Wendy Wallace, but everyone in Santa Marta knows her as Christina, a name she has used since the war.

In 1988, she came to El Salvador to work at a trade union federation in San Salvador. The war was raging, and a year later, a death squad detonated a bomb in the offices where she worked. The attack killed 10 unionists and wounded 40 others. Christina was lucky. She had left the cafeteria where the bomb exploded minutes earlier.

Shortly after that experience, she joined the insurgency and became part of a propaganda unit filming some of the guerrilla's actions.

In 1991, she settled in Santa Marta and at the end of the war, she decided to stay. Because of her communications background, Hades asked her to help create Radio Victoria.

 mostly my role has been to look for the the projects that we have. I was never at the radio fulltime but i es part of the coordinating team so we had a collective that ran the radio [

and basically accompanying you know i never wanted to be two hands on because i didn't wanna be the gringa that runs the radio

 From the beginning, Radio Victoria became the voice of the anti mining front. Radio Victoria explained the dangers of mining to its listeners, By pointing to the environmental and social costs of the industry, it disrupted Pacific Rim's communication campaign.

 Estas condiciones determinan que industrias extractivas como la minería de metales preciosos, sean inviables económica, social y ambientalmente

 Public opinion turned against mining, but soon enough, the threats began. The radio hosts received warning calls on their cell phones.

 The language was very much like gang members you know some of the terms they used and they were very vulgar.

So the asunción they were getting money channeled to them to carry out these threats thats the assumption.

 This wasn't a small thing, since the gangs in El Salvador were known for their cruelty. Then, the killing started. First, it was Marcelo Rivera, a teacher, community leader, and environmentalist.

He had been one of the first to sound the alarm bell when Pacific Rim began prospecting in the region.

 He you know he was a performer and he would come to our we would have these community arts festivals for our anniversary and he would always come and he was pretty close to us

 Rivera was tortured before he was killed, and his body was thrown into a well. This had a huge impact on those who were opposing the mining project.

 and the death Threat said you know you better shut up same thing happened Marcel happened to you

 Later that year, two other activists, Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto, were gunned down.

I'm Amy Goodman. We begin today with El Salvador, where, for the second time in a week, a prominent anti gold mining activist has been assassinated. On Saturday, 32 year old Dora Alicia Recino Sorto was shot dead near her home. She was 8 months pregnant, carrying her 2 year old son. Son Soto and her husband were both active members of the Cobania Environment Committee, which is campaigned against the reopening of a gold mine owned by the Vancouver based Pacific Rim Mining Company.

Last week, Ramiro Rivera Gomez, the Vice President of the Cobania Environment Committee, was shot dead by heavily armed men, despite having been under 24 hour police protection.

 Meanwhile, the death threats against Radio Victoria's staff kept coming. People would bang the doors of their homes at night and caught guns.

I was really scared and you know i didn't know if we should shut down the radio or what we should do but you know people at the radio weapon to on the the only way we can resiste this and that's what we're gonna do

 One day, Christina talked to one of the radio hosts, a young man called Oscar.

 and I said aren't you afraid aren't you scared yeah. You know so much of your life to something it's your life and to not do that to kind of lose your life so you know this is this is whats important and what we have to do

 The three murders were never thoroughly investigated, but for the activists, there was no doubt that they were the result of the anti mining protests.

Despite the threats and the killings, the environmental defenders kept going. They brought on board new allies including El Salvador's, Archbishop, a prominent churchman. Monsignor San Z was also a chemist, and he worried that the use of cyanide by mining companies could cause a major environmental disaster. They also convinced both right wing and left wing politicians to join them. 2008, the government decided to stop approving permits for new mines. It wasn't a ban, yet, but President Antonio Saca said he wanted to better understand the impact gold mining was having on the country's water sources before approving any more permits.

Pacific Rim filed a complaint against El Salvador using a legal tool known as Investor State Dispute Settlement. We've covered this many times in Drilled, but it's a quasi illegal system that is meant to protect companies from governments and enforce free trade agreements. In practice what it does is help companies scare governments away from environmental and human rights legislation and push forward harmful projects, even when activist pressure works and governments reject them.

Pacific Rim claimed that El Salvador, by not allowing it to move forward with its gold mine, had violated its rights. The company asked for 350 million to cover the revenue it was losing as a result of the government's refusal to grant its permits. This, of course, did nothing for Pacific Rim's popularity in El Salvador.

In 2016, the tribunal made a rare ruling against the company, and El Salvador won the dispute, but not before spending millions fighting it. 2017 marked the end of the struggle. In an unprecedented decision, El Salvador's government approved a law that banned all mining for metals in El Salvador.

 Fue un día histórico, dijeron los diputados y es que el pleno legislativo aprobó la ley de prohibición de minería metálica normativa que implica la prohibición de la explotación y exploración minera en territorio salvadoreño en el salvador.

Transcription

In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass an outright ban on mining. It was an effort to protect the country's water, and its people. Now, self-proclaimed "coolest dictator in the world" Nayib Bukele wants to bring mining back to boost the economy, which took a major hit thanks to his embrace of Bitcoin as the national currency in 2021. The activists who helped pass the ban are standing in his way. The solution? Accuse them of a decades-old unsolved murder. The activists go on trial this week. Reporter Sebastian Escalon brings us this story, narrated by Yessenia Funes.

In El Salvador a Cold Case Murder Has Become a Weapon for Silencing Environmental Activists

Information Pollution

Denial to Delay

The Real Free Speech Threat

Petrostates

If you browse the Internet or watch TV you've probably heard of Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, mapped out by a coalition of 100 conservative think tanks, spearheaded (publicly at least) by the Heritage Foundation, which also had a hand in shaping and staffing the first Trump administration. Nothing written down in the Project 2025 manifesto is new, per se, nor is it new that they've written it down (Heritage put out a similar "Mandate for Leadership" in 2016, gearing up for the first Trump term. For that matter, they've been 

 updated, though, and it's handy to have it all written out, side by side, a clear window into what lies behind the door on the right.

One thing that’s important to note is that once again we see that those pushing against climate action are not just aligned with those attacking trans rights, racial justice, labor rights and reproductive rights, but are in the same organizations, being funded by the same universe of backers.

The complete Project 2025 manifesto is 900 pages (?!!), which might explain why it sometimes feels like we're hearing about this thing all the time yet don't know much about it. I haven't quite finished it yet, but I have managed to get to page 500, including Chapter 13, in which the plan for the Environmental Protection Agency is laid out.

The first thing I noticed is the chapter's author: Mandy Gunasekara. Today, Gunasekara is a visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment and senior policy analyst for the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's organization funded by the Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Koch-backed donor-advised fund Donors Trust. A lawyer by training, 

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In El Salvador a Cold Case Murder Has Become a Weapon for Silencing Environmental Activists

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution

Newsletter: Everything You Need to Know About Project 2025's Plan for the EPA

Could Climate-Related Homicide Charges Be a Path to Accountability the Supreme Court Can’t Block?

“A Real First”: Following Devastating Floods, Vermont Passes Landmark Law Targeting Fossil Fuel Companies for Climate Costs

How a Top Climate Consultancy Is Greenwashing Fossil Fuels

Information Pollution

Denial to Delay

The Real Free Speech Threat

Petrostates

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In El Salvador a Cold Case Murder Has Become a Weapon for Silencing Environmental Activists

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world