On Monday, the Moscow Times ran a story on one of the most watched projects in the Caspian region. Kashagan, an offshore oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, is the largest oil field to have been discovered anywhere in the last 30 years, with an estimated 38 billion barrels of oil. … Read More
Month: August 2007
What is holding up the Iraqi oil law?
This is a guest blog from Munir Chalabi, an Iraqi political analyst living in the U.K. As deadline after deadline and benchmark after benchmark passes and with all the pressure imposed by the IMF, the US Administration, the US oil lobby and International Oil Companies (IOCs) on the Iraqi government, the oil law, against all … Read More
Exxon Valdez: Exxon Appeals Again
And so it goes on….Exxon is making a final appeal for a review of a court decision ordering it to pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Exxon has been belligerently battling the judgement for over a decade. The company has managed to get the award cut in … Read More
Big Oil Sued Over Price-Fixing
A group of California gasoline station owners have filed suit in a US federal district court in San Francisco accusing Big Oil of fixing gasoline prices across the United States from 1998 to 2001. The suit claims that Texaco, state-owned Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell colluded to set gasoline sold to 23,000 Texaco and … Read More
UK “May Miss 2020 Target for CO2”
Further promises by the UK government to meet greenhouse gas targets look unlikely to be met, according to a leading think tank says. Cambridge Econometrics was one of the first to forecast that the government would miss its target to cut CO2 by 20% for 2010.
Democrats In $7 Billion Plan to Green US
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives wants to spend almost $7bn in the coming year to reduce the nation’s enormous carbon footprint, reports the Independent. This has put it on a collision course with the White House, which still remains in denial about climate change. A major clash is expected between the White House and Congress … Read More
Dean Batters Mexican Oil Industry
Although Hurricane Dean may be weakened, it is still battering evacuated oil rigs in the Bay of Campeche in the heart of Mexico’s energy industry. Although weakened from its overland journey, Dean has moved over the Bay of Campeche, home to more than 100 oil platforms, three major oil exporting ports and the Cantarell oil … Read More
Rich Should “Pay Poor to Cut Carbon”
Rich nations should be absolved from the need to cut emissions if they pay developing countries to do it on their behalf, a senior UN official has said. The controversial suggestion from Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has angered environmental groups. They say climate change will not … Read More
Oily influences on US energy legislation
A study done by the Center for American Progress (CAP) shows a strong correlation between Big Oil political contributions and votes on energy legislation which eliminates $16 billion in oil company tax breaks and royalty relief. The 221 House members who voted for the House energy bill received around $5.8 million in total from the … Read More
Now Denmark Eyes North Pole
The Arctic rush is well and truly on. Hot on the heels of Russia and Canada, Denmark has now started a new polar expedition to explore the region. The aim is to gather data showing whether there is a basis for a possible future Danish claim to parts of the Arctic. If evidence is found … Read More