Climate protesters storm Phillips 66 oil facility in L.A., demanding oil companies ‘pay up’ for recent wildfires
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Dozens of climate protesters with Sunrise Movement LA rallied outside Phillips 66’s Los Angeles Lubricant Terminal on Thursday morning, with 16 demonstrators storming the facility’s office building.
They vowed to occupy it until their demands are met or they are arrested.
As Los Angeles reels from what is projected to be one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history, the youth climate activist group says big oil companies are culpable, by emitting greenhouse gases while internally acknowledging the practice’s link to climate change, which, in turn, has worsened wildfires in California.
Sunrise Movement LA is demanding big oil companies, including Phillips 66, “pay up” to support wildfire relief and aid the state’s transition to clean energy.
“Fossil fuel CEOs are responsible for the destruction that is happening right now in Los Angeles,” said Simon Aron, 18, a Sunrise Movement volunteer and the action lead for Thursday’s protest. “They are responsible for the fact that me and my neighbors had to evacuate our homes, that we still can’t drink our water.”
Phillips 66 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the days after the devastating wildfires, air monitors recorded some of the highest levels of air pollution in recent years, coinciding with a surge in hospital visits.
A 2015 Times investigation found that while Exxon publicly described the science of climate change as “unclear” in the 1990s, it was internally incorporating climate change projections into long-term planning for its Arctic operations.
In 2023, California sued five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world for a “decades-long campaign of deception” about climate change, including ConocoPhillips, which spun off Phillips 66 as an independent firm in 2012.
Wildfires in Southern California are becoming destructive for multiple reasons, fire experts say, including an increase in development in areas with high wildfire risk and a feedback loop in which native plant species don’t have enough time between constant fire ignitions from humans to regrow, opening the land for fast-growing, more flammable invasive brushes.
Scientific studies have also found that human-caused climate change is increasing the risk of rapid wildfire growth in the Golden State.
A 2023 paper from climate and fire researchers across California found that so far, climate change has increased the frequency of extreme wildfire growth by 25%. By the end of the century, California could see 59% to 172% more frequent explosive fire growth, the researchers estimated.
After the Palisades and Eaton fires, Republican and Democratic leaders have condemned city leadership for water pressure problems and a lack of preparedness, which critics say allowed the fires to become as destructive as they did.
The two fires, which have burned more than 27,000 acres and have yet to reach 100% containment as of Thursday morning, have killed at least 25 people, with 23 still missing.
As dangerous winds subsided Wednesday, there was growing frustration among residents desperate to see what’s left of their homes. But there’s a growing risk that significant fire weather could return in Los Angeles and Ventura counties starting early next week.
“Right now, my house is under level-two evacuation warning,” said Aron. “We have been able to return to the house, but … there’s white flakes in the air, and for a while, I would watch Watch Duty as the fire came closer and closer to my house, not knowing where I would sleep that night.”
Aron has been involved with Sunrise Movement, a national organization focused on mobilizing young people into climate action, since he was 14. The recent wildfires have galvanized L.A.’s young climate-minded folks like nothing else, he said.
“I have never gotten so many texts from friends asking what they can do to help with Sunrise, to help with the climate movement, to fight back,” he said. “We have an opportunity to fight back, an opportunity to change the narrative and reveal the faces behind these disasters.”
The Phillips 66 lubricant terminal processes and stores oil products and ethanol and sits seven miles north of the company’s Carson oil refinery.
Phillips 66 announced in October that it would shut down the refinery and its sister site in Wilmington by the end of 2025 amid the growing popularity of electric vehicles and community demands for cleaner air.
The two facilities produce various petroleum products and about 8% of the state’s gasoline.
This is a developing story.
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