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Posts in June 2008

• Guess Who Helped Draw Up Iraqi Ministry Oil Contracts … The Americans

  Andy Rowell

  Jun30

  This is one of those stories that although you should be outraged about it, you re not surprised at all about it, because you suspected it all along. On the day that five foreign oil companies get their grubby hands on contracts to help develop Iraq’s oil, the NYT reveals that a small State Department…
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• The Ice-Free North Pole

  Andy Rowell

  Jun27

  Will there be one event that finally galvanizes international action on climate change? Something so shocking that it becomes a tipping point for politicians to finally take this issue seriously. It did not happen after Hurricane Katrina. Nor did it happen after the European floods or heatwaves. Maybe the news, from today’s Independent, that for…
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• The Day that Justice Died..

  Andy Rowell

  Jun26

  Stunned. Outraged. Bewildered. Sickened. Saddened. Hurt. These are just some of responses in Alaska to the news that the US Supreme Court had slashed punitive damages against Exxon for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill from $2.5 billion to $500 million. Meanwhile the champagne corks will have been popping at Exxon’s HQ, after it was ordered…
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• Biofuels Forcing 30 Million into Poverty

  Andy Rowell

  Jun25

  As the global food crisis worsens, the aid agency Oxfam has warned that the replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more than 30 million people into poverty. Oxfam has re-iterated what many people have been saying for a while that so-called “green policies” in developed countries are contributing to the world’s soaring food…
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• Spat Between Russia and BP Escalates

  Andy Rowell

  Jun24

  Whilst the world obsesses about how the oil industry could help bring down the oil price, a growing spat is taking place that could have huge ramifications for the oil industry. It concerns the Russians and BP, with some saying the Kremlin is trying to push BP out of the country. Over the past few…
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• Its time to put the oil barons on trial …

  Andy Rowell

  Jun23

  James Hansen is used to speaking his mind. It was twenty years ago that one of the world’s leading climate scientists, first warned the US Congress about the dangers of global warming. “It is time to stop waffling”, he said. For twenty years the world has waffled aimlessly in its response to the issue, guided…
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• All is not well in Alberta..

  Andy Rowell

  Jun20

  When the oil industry answers it critics about whether we are running out of oil, the word Alberta normally comes into the conversation pretty soon. Alberta’s tar sands have reserves estimated at just behind Saudi Arabia, and are seen as the industry’s salvation (after Iraq). The only problem being for oil sands is that they…
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• The long wait to claim the prize draws to an end

  Andy Rowell

  Jun19

  The long wait may finally be over to claim the last great prize left for the oil industry. But not, importantly, how the oil industry, or the Bush administration wanted it to. Some 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power, four Western oil companies are in the…
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• EIA: Offshore drilling won’t impact prices until…2030…if then.

  Steve Kretzmann

  Jun18

  I had just started to draft a blog about this when I caught Joe Romm’s excellent post on the same topic. Over to you, Joe: Or, jump directly to the Energy Information Administration’s report.

• Once an oil man, always an oil man

  Andy Rowell

  Jun18

  For a man whose ties to the oil industry are legendary, it came as a surprise that Bush once said that America had to break its oil addiction. Like an ailing addict who has tried but failed to beat his cravings, Bush has gone cold turkey for oil. As the world faces record oil prices,…
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