Signals

Accumulate, accumulate!

Scene report from a residents' meeting with Big Oil, by Brian Khow. Art by Zedeck Siew

SHARON CHIN

SHARON CHIN

— 7 min read
Accumulate, accumulate!
Art by Zedeck Siew

Hello from the land of it's-been-awhile-since-I-wrote. I updated the news page for you. Some highlights:

  • Sin Chew Daily reported on Kehidupan Seterusnya: Sejarah Lisan 13 Mei, which I made the cover art for. I'm pleased they mentioned (with images!) Ibrahim Hussein's black painting, and Redza Piyadasa's coffin sculpture.
  • "Rintisan Ria (Joy II)", a collaborative performance for the closing ceremony of Temu Pasor, an independent art festival at Ipoh wet market organized by our friends Kinta Zine Club.
  • My work about tides and rising sea levels was part of Skola Gambar Ilham, an exhibition in a moving truck.

Sin Chew Daily 15/6/2025; "Rintisan Ria" performance at Pasar Besar Ipoh; my work in Skola Gambar Ilham

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Today's signal is by Brian Khow, with drawings by Zedeck. It's a scene report about our neighbourhood's meeting with Hengyuan Refining Company's (HRC) management in November last year, which we secured only after months of direct action. These actions culminated in then Minister of Environment Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad personally paying a visit to HRC, along with the Menteri Besar of Negeri Sembilan and Director General of the Department of Environment.

Brian went with us to this meeting, just as he has accompanied every step in our efforts to battle the refinery's pollution. We met at a local branch of Parti Sosialis Malaysia. In our household, he's known as Poot's Best Friend, because he's the only stranger our deplorably anti-social cat, Poot, doesn't sprint away from.

Brian often makes me think about this passage by Thich Nhat Hanh. The zen master is describing who can be relied on in society:

From a conversation with Daniel Berrigan in The Raft is Not the Shore, 2001

I keep this passage close, not because I want to make myself feel bad about being an intellectual – as you'll find below, Brian is a skilled thinker and writer himself – but because I want to show up as much as Brian does: for me and Zedeck, for the likes of Poot, for our neighbourhood, for the grassroots struggles blooming all over the country; and for life. Only the second time we met, I asked Brian if he would help me arrange rocks around a mangrove tree struggling at the edge the beach. He shrugged and said, 'let's go'.

Scene Report: Accummulate, accummulate! That's the law of the land!

By Brian Khow | Art by Zedeck Siew

Friday 9:00AM, 8 Nov 2024
HRC Sports Club, Port Dickson

It was a hectic morning—I overslept. I fired up Waze and rushed from Seremban to Sharon Chin’s place in Port Dickson. For some reason, Waze decided to take me on a scenic tour (was it traffic, or was I being punked?). I thought I was going to be late, only to realize I had read the time wrong. Big sigh of relief. I made it just in time, and off we went together to attend a community meeting with the HRC oil refinery.

The meeting was held at the refinery’s very own Clubhouse—fancy! The oil industry sure knows how to flex. They even gave us gifts: a plastic water bottle and a succulent in a little plastic pot. It felt like a subtle message: “Look around, buddy—you live in a world made of oil. That plastic in your hand? That’s oil! So maybe cool it with the complaints, unless you’re ready to give up plastic, hmm?” Honestly, clever move.

By the way—fun fact! Plastic is synthesized from crude oil and natural gas. Yum.

Since the Clubhouse sits right by the sea, I stood outside in the scorching heat before the meeting, staring at the ocean, catching the occasional breeze. I felt a bit gloomy. It’d been so long since I last heard waves crashing against the shore. When will we finally stop extracting oil and transition to renewable energy? Why aren’t we using the sunlight, the waves, the sea breeze all around us? Some say it’s because the evil oil industry pressures governments to delay the transition. But I think the problem runs deeper. It’s capitalism itself—it needs capital to constantly accumulate. And here’s the kicker: if we switch to solar power, how’s capital supposed to accumulate on cloudy or rainy days?

“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”—a wise man once said.[1]

Alright then, accumulate we shall. Like any Proper Official Meeting™, it began with bigwig speeches, followed by a presentation on HRC’s history and its smoke emission systems. I guess that’s what you call an opening act of accumulation. It was my first time at such a meeting and I’ve never worked in the oil industry, so I guess I accumulated a bit of knowledge—although half a year later, I’ve forgotten all of it.

But the residents—some of them former refinery staff—were not so easy to impress. They had accumulated a lot of frustration. During the Q&A, they went full blast, firing tough questions about pollution and demanding solutions. The mood quickly shifted from “Thanks for the PowerPoint” to “Cut the crap.”

What surprised me, though, was that CEO Mr. Luke seemed... kind of humble? He even apologized to the residents—though not without sneaking in a few justifications. And then, plot twist: he passed the mic (and the pressure) to the newly appointed COO, Mr. Teng. Now that guy left an impression. He looked thin and fragile in his refinery uniform—like he’d already taken a few hits. He shared his experience in the industry and, lowering his stance, promised: “I will try my best to control flaring.”

HRC meeting CEO Gifts.jpg

After the company’s careful persuasion campaign, the residents seemed willing—yet again—to give them the benefit of the doubt. Some were ex-staff with emotional ties. Some acknowledged that the refinery had kept the local economy going. Some probably had kids or grandkids working inside. What else could they do? When people need to make ends meet, when families need income, when small businesses need customers from the refinery’s workforce, it’s hard to turn your back on the very industry that’s polluting you.

So in the end, everyone left on a relatively friendly note. But I really think this meeting was a milestone in the residents’ struggle—especially considering that communication with the company had been on ice since 2023. It took a lot of pressure to get this meeting back on track. So hats off not just to the residents, but also to Sharon Chin and Zedeck Siew for their persistent organizing efforts.

I truly hope this small act of resistance helps the community grow stronger. And may this spirit of fighting back accumulate—across all the polluted places in this country.

  1. A famous quote from Karl Marx's Capital: Volume One, Chapter Twenty-Four: Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital, Section 3. ↩︎

This has been Signal 012. I'm doing my best to accumulate momentum for a more a regular newsletter schedule. Grateful that you're here!

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Scanner - Fossil fuels edition

A year has passed, and our neighbourhood is now trying to secure the twice-yearly townhall meetings pledged to us by HRC. Neither the meetings, nor the promised follow-up actions, have materialized. The refinery is a fact of life in Port Dickson, but so are we. We WILL meet them again and they must abide to being, if not good, then at least lawful, neighbours. A reminder of what transpired last year:

The opening sequence of Blade Runner (1982) famously depicts oil and gas flares erupting across a dystopian cityscape. I stumbled upon an auction lot of the film's visual effects storyboards in a 'black lever arch folder'. Their physicality is enthralling and instructive, convincing me to 1) maintain the physical archive of all my past projects, and 2) make my sci-fi film.

Flare Intel is a satellite-based data tool, mapping oil and gas flares across the globe. I wrote to the CEO (an ex-McKinsey consultant) asking for free access to this powerful tool, telling him it would literally change lives in Port Dickson. We spoke for 30mins on a video call. He said he would help, but I did not hear from him again.

Carbon Mapper, however, IS as free as its marketing says. Also satellite-based, it maps CO2 and methane emissions globally. I'm not sure how comprehensive the data set is at the moment, but there are a number of significant data points in Malaysia.

Boom and Dust depicts the Permian Basin, the world's most productive oil field located in Texas, USA. The accordian photobook folds out to 128 panels, and comes with a cassette tape of field recordings. A true portrait of the 'Petroplex'.

Boom and Dust by Jason Reed and Barry Stone. Released on Metalabel

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