Four Democratic senators, including Senator Carl Levin have called on the State Department’s inspector general to investigate whether the agency encouraged lucrative oil deals between Iraq and several Western companies.
Any back-room meddling would violate US administration policy, which was to discourage the business dealings until Baghdad passed the controversial Oil law, which has been stalled […]

US Presidential candidate Senator John McCain has released an updated list of his top donors. It reveals that nearly a fifth of those who have brought in the largest amounts for him, more than $500,000 each, are lobbyists or work for firms that engage in lobbying.
One of those listed is a top oil lobbyist and […]

We have said it before and we will say it again. Once an oilman always an oilman. You can’t get crude out from your veins.
Yesterday, in a sop to his oil industry buddies, George W. Bush lifted an executive order banning oil exploration in US waters.
It was a political move aimed at ratcheting up the […]

Log onto the website StopOilSpeculationNow.com and you might think that it’s a plea by poor American consumers who are being hit by rocking oil prices. But you would be wrong: it is a PR effort by the Air Transport Association of America.
The adverts include one where a globe is being squeezed with a drop of […]

Before his death, one of the great and most respected Nigerians of the modern era, Claude Ake, warned about the “militerisation of commerce.” He repeatedly warned against Shell’s use of the military and mobile police force to protect their oil interests in the Delta.
In the twelve years since his death, America has increased its military […]