Get ready for a week of protests as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation comes to San Francisco. Early Wednesday, the group Oil and Gas Action Network launched the actions by hanging a 75-foot banner above the Treasure Island tunnel on the Bay Bridge reading “Biden & APEC: End Fossil Fuels.”

As over 21 heads of state arrive for the conference starting this weekend under the theme “Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All,” protesters are arriving with the same challenge.

“We expect about 200 different organizations to come to the city to participate in a range of creative actions,” said Matt Leonard, a spokesman for the group.

Different groups will protest other causes, including labor rights and climate justice. But his group’s focus is on U.S. policy on fossil fuels.

“We expect about 200 different organizations to come to the city to participate in a range of creative actions.” Matt Leonard, Oil and Gas Action Network

“President Biden has come under consistent fire for his administration’s approval of massive new fossil fuel projects,” the group said in a statement. “They include the Willow Pipeline in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia.”

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2022 the resulting total net petroleum imports (imports minus exports) were about -1.19 million barrels per day, which means that the United States was a net petroleum exporter.

“A lot of the proposed fossil fuel development in the U.S. is meant for export markets where we’re literally exporting pollution and emissions to other countries,” Leonard said. “While people like Biden and (Gov. Gavin) Newsom are claiming that they’re reducing usage of fossil fuels in the U.S., the reality is we’re just producing them for other people to burn. And that’s equally, if not more problematic.”

Leonard said the largest of the planned peaceful protests is planned for Sunday, starting at The Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.