This week on Vice:
Corruption over oil threatens the world's newest nation.
This is not the country we fought for.
People are upset about where we have found ourselves.
This fence here is the only thing
separating these people from the attacks that happen
right out there.
And then, inside the controversy
over resources on tribal land in America.
You're looking at a group of unpaid social objectors
versus one of the wealthiest industries in the world.
More oil has been sold here than all the gold rushes put together.
Go, go, go!
More oil has been sold here than all the gold rushes put together.
Sync & corrections by honeybunny www.addic7ed.com
Oil was first discovered in the south of Sudan
by Chevron in 1978.
Now, that discovery quickly ignited
a long-running civil war with the north.
And for the next 22 years, the south, which had most of the oil,
fought the government in the north, which took most of the wealth.
By the time it was over,
more than two million people were dead
and more than three million, displaced.
But six years ago, the people of South Sudan
voted almost unanimously to break away from the north,
becoming the world's newest country.
The US played an instrumental role,
sending close to $11 billion in aid.
For the first time, the people of South Sudan
had a chance to benefit from their wealth of natural resources.
But now, the south may be falling victim
to the so-called "resource curse."
How many patients on average do you have here coming in?
Maker Isaac is the director
of the main hospital
for South Sudan's 12 million people.
Broken bone? Ooh, that's a bad break.
He's very skinny.
Yeah. Is that normal?
Oh, I see.
So, there's no food at all in the hospital?
That must be difficult
when a lot of people are here for malnutrition reasons,
or for dehydration and such. Yes. Yes.
What's she in here for?
It seems like getting treatment is quite difficult.
Without food, medicine, or electricity,
South Sudan's largest hospital is clearly failing its patients.
Do you have enough funding here
for you guys to get paid and everything? No?
How much?
Less that $30. Yeah.
And you're the director of the hospital? Yeah. Yeah.
Why?
While South Sudan struggles to provide the most basic services,
it's sitting on some of the largest oil reserves on the continent.
Madding Ngor is a journalist
whose family members fought and died
in the war for independence.
The economy is struggling,
because the oil prices are declining.
And South Sudan is a country that is almost entirely dependent on oil.
It has tremendous effect.
In this oilproducing country,
it's actually almost impossible to buy gas.
There's a big fuel shortage here?
It's huge. It's immense.
Seeing all these people queuing up, to try and fill up their tanks,
is that how everyone gets their fuel?
It's crazy. Let me tell you on record,
I waited for 10 hours. 10 hours?
10 hours, and I didn't get it.
So, where's everyone getting their fuel?
There is the black market.
So, these guys are all selling gas? Yeah. Let's see.
A single bottle of fuel costs more
than the monthly salary of most people in South Sudan.
Despite at least three and a half billion barrels in oil reserves,
the economy is now completely crippled,
a far cry from what was expected when the country gained its independence.
- Were you here on Independence Day? - Absolutely.
I was here, and this place
was filled up with people.
This was the only time in our history
where we came together, despite our differences,
whether they were tribal, whether they were political,
whether they were economical.
All kinds of people where here.
Just like a wedding night,
when the honeymoon fades, the real problems, they kick in.
And it was just a matter of three years.
and the country erupted in war.
December 15, 2013, there was a brewing power struggle.
between Salva Kiir Mayardit, president of South Sudan...
...and Riek Machar, the former first vice president.
And of course at the center of power, is oil, is money.
It became a conflict along tribal lines:
the Dinka, where the president comes from,
and the Nuer, where the former first vice president comes from--
and that engulfed the whole country.
With the country's two largest tribes divided
by their loyalty to the president and the vice president,
the world's newest country split along ethnic lines.
This is not the country we fought for.
We were fighting for a future
where there is a peace, there is a stability,
there is prosperity.
So, indeed, people are upset
about where we have found ourselves in the country.
In 2016,
a team of investigators
backed by George Clooney--
who's been an activist in this region
for over a decade--
published a two-year long investigation
into South Sudan's leaders.
This morning, we're prepared to give evidence
of massive criminal behavior
by the president of South Sudan
and by his opposition, the ousted vice president.
They concluded that at the root
of the power struggle is a fierce battle
over control of the state's assets.
They're stealing the money to fund their militias,
to attack and kill one another.
South Sudan's leaders and their relatives
were getting rich off lucrative deals
in the oil and mining industries
while the country was driven into war and famine.
Fourteen-year-old Bol is among the nearly two million people
who were forced from their homes
and now scattered across South Sudan.
How did you get here?
Do you think about your family a lot?
To find out how the ongoing war
is affecting civilians outside of Juba,
we flew north, crossing ethnic lines
to the tribal home of the opposition.
More than 120,000 ethnic Nuers
are now living inside this one barbed-wire camp.
UN peacekeepers protect them from their own government.
Half of them are children like Isaac,
who fled ethnic slaughter by government soldiers.
Did you lose anyone?
Have you talked to anyone about how you feel?
I mean, I can tell you're...
upset and you're thinking about your brother.
We just climbed up to the edge of the POC site,
and from up here you can see how absolutely humongous this site is.
In fact, it's the third largest city in South Sudan.
And this fence here is the only thing separating these people
from the attacks and killings and atrocities that happen right out there.
Even inside the camps, food is scarce.
Civilians, mostly women, are forced to leave
the camp every day to collect firewood,
which they can then sell to purchase food.
So it takes four or five hours to reach the place where you're going?
What are the biggest threats when you go out to collect wood?
Who is it that's beating and raping?
Both the UN and the African Union have documented cases
of mass rape of civilians and even children by government soldiers.
We're with the UN mission in South Sudan,
just out with the Mongolian battalion.
The security situation around Nhialdiu has been pretty precarious recently,
and so, these peacekeepers are frequently having to head out
on patrols to go and assess what's going on.
The territory around the camp has changed hands several times during the conflict.
Right now, it's government soldiers that are controlling this town.
There are so many soldiers loitering around this one tiny little village,
and several extremely young-looking kids with guns.
According to the UN, there are more
than 17,000 child soldiers involved in the conflict,
and that number is growing.
With one of the largest peacekeeping missions
protecting hundreds of thousands
from their own government, we sat down
with the country's minister of information.
Michael Lueth belongs
to the small circle of presidential elites.
The US recent attempted to slap sanctions on him
for orchestrating the slaughter of civilians.
Can you explain what the current state of South Sudan is in your eyes?
Well, the current state of South Sudan
in terms of human rights is... is okay.
You say it's okay. I mean, there's... almost three million people
displaced throughout South Sudan,
and about 200,000 of those are living within IDP camps within their own country.
Were they displaced because of human rights violations?
Yes. No.
There are widespread reports throughout the country,
and outside of the country, of killings, of brutal mass-rapes.
These are reports from independent people, from individuals,
from humanitarian groups from the UN.
These are not credible reports.
These are reports which are written here in the hotels.
I mean, it sounds like you're saying that the government accepts zero responsibility
for any of the atrocities that have happened throughout your country.
If you don't accept any of that responsibility,
it's incredibly difficult to see how peace could ever be reached,
if there's no accountability at all.
I'm not saying that there had never been any offenses committed.
Yes, there are offenses committed.
People are under arrest-- people are under arrest... By your people.
...and they are under investigation.
Others have already undergone trial.
Do you refute the fact that South Sudan
is one of the most corrupt countries in the world?
Well, corruption is all over the world.
South Sudan is part of the world,
so it cannot be free of corruption.
I'm asking you on a scale whether South Sudan
is up there as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
South Sudan is one of the corrupt countries in the world,
not the most.
Are you corrupt? Me?
No, I'm not corrupt.
While the government denies
the allegations of corruption, the fact remains
that the same men who tore this country apart
remain very much in power
while civilians continue to pay the price.
And it's the international community that's left with the costly task
of trying to hold the world's youngest country together.
We're hoping that Bol, the 14-year-old kid that we met in Juba
is on this plane so that he can come and be reunified with his family.
Bol, who's 14 years old,
hasn't seen his family here in Bentiu since he was 11.
Does it feel good to be back in your town?
What are you most excited about?
Who are these people outside?
How long have you been waiting for this day?
The Dakota Access Pipeline brought
an intense wave of attention
to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
After protesting for months,
the opposition successfully blocked the pipeline,
which they saw as a great danger
to sacred land and fresh water.
Under my presidency,
we'll accomplish a complete
American energy independence.
Complete. Complete.
But President Donald Trump's pro-energy, pro-pipeline platform,
stands in direct opposition to practically everything
that the Standing Rock protest has represented,
which constitutes a new threat
to the future of America's tribal lands.
By the way, you'll have to take my word for it,
because I don't know if you can see me,
but we're in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
We came here in early December 2016
at the peak of the protest movement.
Thousands of people from across the country--
native Americans, military veterans,
and environmental activists--
came together here in solidarity for one cause:
protecting land and water they say is under threat
from oil and gas development.
I've never seen anything like this in real life.
The closest thing I can compare it to
is a scene from Game of Thrones or Mad Max.
You came prepared. How come you have gas masks?
Their goal was to halt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline,
whose 1,172-mile path
runs directly through land
which was once part of the Great Sioux Nation,
and to some is still considered sacred.
If the pipeline were to spill oil,
it could contaminate the Missouri River,
which provides drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux and millions of others.
And with nearly 8,000 major pipeline incidents
in the last three decades,
leaders like Standing Rock Sioux Chairman
Dave Archambault, felt the need to act.
How did the protest
against the Dakota Access pipeline begin?
It wasn't overnight.
2003, 2006, there was a lot of exploration
going on in North Dakota.
There was this new Bakken oil play.
The US Geological Survey
is now calling the Bakken formation the largest continuous
oil accumulation it's ever assessed.
It led to the biggest oil boom in American history,
increasing domestic production
by 87 percent
from when President Obama first took office
until its peak in 2015.
2014, we learned the Dakota Access pipeline
was being planned, and we expressed our concerns,
saying, "This pipeline is gonna destroy a lot of our sacred places."
So, we filed a suit, then they gave a notice of preconstruction.
There was a sacred camp that was set up.
And then a week later, there's maybe six people,
and then 12 people, and then 30, and then 100.
Images of clashes
between Sioux protesters and authorities
sparked a wave of support from other Native American tribes
and environmental activists, hoping to stop construction.
By December, the camp had grown to 10,000 people.
What was it about this protest
that became a kind of phenomenon?
Like, why? I think it's pretty simple.
We've been treated wrong for so many centuries,
that it's time to stand up.
A lot of people recognized that and said,
"We're gonna stand with you."
And it worked.
While we were there, the Obama administration
halted the pipeline's construction.
This is a huge victory for protesters in North Dakota.
The Army Corps of Engineers announced it will look
for an alternate route for a controversial pipeline project
near Native American lands.
But once in office,
it only took four days for Donald Trump to allow
the project to continue with an action of his own.
This is with respect to the construction
of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Trump issued executive memorandums,
which showed support for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
Okay?
We are the original occupants of these lands,
and infrastructure projects do have an impact on us.
Economic development is why they took our land.
There's no benefit to our tribe for this pipeline.
All across the country,
Native American tribes are concerned
about the risks of energy extraction.
But in Oklahoma, one tribe has been reaping the benefits
from their underground resources
for over a century.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you
to Osage Minerals Council regular meeting,
Wednesday, January the 18th.
The Osage Minerals Council oversees and manages
the headrights to all oil, gas, and minerals found
underneath the nearly 1.5 million acres that makes up the reservation.
Everett Waller was elected
council chairman in 2014.
I want the Osages to be known as an oil tribe.
I sell a product that comes out of the wellhead
at approximately $50 a barrel,
but every dollar I make under royalty
is delivered to the owner.
So the Osage are able to dictate where people can and cannot drill.
Welcome to my reservation, yes.
So, the Osage are pretty unique
in how much control you have over your mineral wealth.
We give the credit to my great-great-grandfather.
His name was Watiankah the Mighty.
He saw this vision about our future.
He saw metal flying and then running on the ground.
This was back when there were Lincoln Logs and stuff like that.
But we had someone with enough foresight
to ask in our treaty rights
that we wanted everything under the ground.
We struck oil in 1898.
Once it was found, everyone come down
to get their fortune like a gold rush.
More oil has been sold here than all gold rushes put together.
Figures suggest some 20 percent
of America's fossil fuels are on reservation land.
Imagine that.
I'm representing one of the richest tribes in the world.
We own the oil. We own the gas.
It's worth billions.
We haven't even hit the helium yet.
That's gonna be worth a trillion dollars.
Up at Standing Rock, it seems like the last thing anybody wants
is to be in bed with energy companies,
and yet, arguably, that's what's served the Osage so well.
I'm wondering, what the Osage position is
on reconciling the relationship with the energy companies
with belief in the sanctity of land, trying to protect your reservation.
We understand the sacred land.
We are one of the best custodians there is on the planet
of trying to retrieve this fossil fuel
and not damage Mother Earth.
But that wasn't always the case.
The Osage Tribal Council fired
former environmental inspector Chris White
in 1995 after he reported
130 potential violations
during his employment.
Do you see where the salt has come up here
on the edge around this joint here?
That's a leak.
Most of the operators in Osage County
on the reservation, they're good operators.
There are some operators that, when given the opportunity,
they will take advantage of an area like this, right here.
It's money to them. If they can cut corners,
it reduces their overhead, so they're dumping stuff on the ground,
or not disposing of it properly,
not maintaining their equipment in a proper working order.
After being fired,
Chris filed a complaint against the council
under the whistle-blower provision
within the Safe Drinking Water Act.
He won the case, and it was discovered
that the council's grounds for firing him were unlawful.
How does it make you feel to come back here after all of that?
It's depressing.
At some point in time,
the chickens are gonna come home to roost.
But spills are not the only consequence
of America's shale oil revolution.
We're in Cushing, Oklahoma.
People often refer to this as the Saudi Arabia of the West,
because there's more oil flowing through and stored here
than anywhere else in North America.
Cushing also happens to be experiencing a rash of earthquakes.
Since 2008, the state's gone
from averaging two a year to two a day.
A powerful earthquake
rattled central Oklahoma Saturday.
Oklahoma geological survey experts
have connected the increase in quakes
to the disposal of wastewater from a oil and gas production process
known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Jake Walter is
the state seismologist
for the Oklahoma Geological Survey,
and is studying the steady rise
in seismic activity over the last decade.
What's going on? What's causing the earthquakes?
There's thousands of injection wells throughout Oklahoma.
Oklahoma has loads and loads of faults
in some of the deepest sedimentary layers.
Because of the high volumes
of water that have been injected,
that water is working its way into some of these faults,
so that these faults are allowed to slip.
How does Oklahoma compare
to the rest of the country in terms of seismic activity?
Well, with the exception of Alaska,
Oklahoma is the most seismically active state in the US.
We're looking at a map of Oklahoma here,
and the earthquakes are in red,
and the injection wells are in those black squares there.
You can see that injections sort of spread
to the north-central part of Oklahoma,
and the earthquakes are not far behind.
We're getting to a point where some of these earthquakes are fairly significant--
the 5.8 that was in September of this year,
the 5.0 near Cushing,
which is near a nationally strategic oil pipeline.
These sort of last six years have been unprecedented.
How worried should people be about these earthquakes?
The hazard is very, very real.
But the threat
of catastrophic damage to infrastructure
in Oklahoma has not stopped the surge in shale oil production,
which has skyrocketed over thousand percent
since the year 2000.
With the support for a new oil-friendly administration,
the industry has 32,000 miles
of new and planned pipelines
in the works across North America,
according to Pipeline & Gas Journal.
And already, the Dakota Access pipeline has leaked,
confirming the fears that brought it
so much attention in the first place.
Luckily, the leaks didn't impact drinking water,
but Dave Archambault showed us just how vulnerable
the tribe could be if they had.
Would you say that this pipeline
is now the biggest threat to the community?
Today it is.
If you look right here, this is where the water comes in.
You can see the treatment plant,
the intake, and the water tower all right here.
And that's the system that provides the fresh drinking water,
but it all comes from Missouri River.
This pipeline that threatens this water supply,
carrying 550,000 barrels
of crude oil with benzene in it,
is gonna have a direct impact on our people.
And that's not right.
Even though it's legal,
even though the political system says,
"This is what we're gonna do,"
we can't continue down this path,
or we're gonna leave nothing for our kids.
There are currently over 150 proposed oil and gas pipelines
in the works across the country,
many of which could potentially cross through tribal lands.
but the legacy of Standing Rock has endured
through numerous pipeline protest movements
that have sprung up across North America.
And pipeline divestment groups have shepherded
the removal of billions
from the balance sheets of investors.
Seattle is the first city
to have divested from Wells Fargo.
Despite setbacks brought by the Trump administration,
these people aren't giving up.
The fight for clean water
is the battle for the soul
of our nation and of all nations.
Our way of life is being destroyed.
Instead of expanding human rights,
the new administration limits human rights.
Repeat after me, everybody!
- I... - I...
...believe... ..believe...
...that we... ..that we...
...will win! ...will win!
Sync & corrections by honeybunny www.addic7ed.com