Gas export protesters shut down Bank of America over $4B credit line for Dominion
On the 21st of January, opponents of Bank of America's investments in Dominion's fracked gas export facility at Cove Point showed up at the branch across the street from the White House. Some of them were from Lusby in Calvert County, in the area an accident at the gas plant could incinerate. When one of the activists tried to deliver a letter to the bank manager, the bank refused to accept it and locked their doors in response to several more activists going inside. The bnak branch remained locked and shut down for the duration of the protest
Outside, more and more activists showed up for a picket with noisemakers. These were deemed necessary since Bank of America did not seem to be listening to the people who live near Dominion's Cove Point LNG (liquified natural gas) facility. The former gas import plant is one year into a three year project to turn it into a much larger export facility for fracked gas, and running about six months behind schedule due to activist pressure and nervous financial institutions. Other bankers and investors have expressed "concern" that this facility has become a risky investment in ways other than the physical safety of those living inside the 1.8KM incineration radius of an LNG accident. As that "concern" spreads, Dominion could become the Huntingdon Life Sciences of fossil fuel production and export. Right now they have a $ 4 billion line of credit from Bank of America making possible things like the Cove Point expansion and the Atlantic Coast pipeline to feed it. If Bank of America dumps Dominion, their dreams of fracked gas export could well go belly-up. The amount of money necessary to bail out Dominion would then be at least that $4 billion, or almost 40 times as much as it cost US Bank to bail out Huntingdon Life Sciences after activists severed their $100 Million lifeline to Fortress Inc. In other words, activist should only have to kill the gas export plant once for it to stay all the day dead.
The DC Media Group reports that a FERC commissioner accused the protesters of opposing infrastructure that would keep them alive in the blizzard. In doing so this FERC commission conveniently forgot that the pipelines, compressor stations, and LNG plants are for exporting gas to foreign markets, not for domestic users. Also forgotten was the simple fact that humans have been living with blizzards since long before natural gas, coal gas or even coal itself was ever used for heat. Speaking of which, Bank of America was once the largest investor in mountaintop removal coal mining, now they are a huge investor in fracking and gas export. Perhaps gas is the new coal at Bank of America?
Video from both the team inside Bank of America and the protest outside
