“Compromised” API Set for Key Safety Role

January 31, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

So its back to business as usual. Bob Dudley, BP’s chief executive, is set to announce a resumption of dividend payments tomorrow as a signal to investors that the oil giant is back on track, after last year’s Deepwater disaster. The reinstatement is key for Dudley to show investor confidence before his inaugural presentation to … Read More

Was Ugandan Oil Deal “Corrupt”?

January 28, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

Tullow Oil is “approaching the finishing line” in talks with the Ugandan government to resolve a tax dispute that has held up plans to bring in new partners to exploit its oil reserves there. Tullow expects to reach an agreement to sell a share of its Uganda assets to Total SA and China National Offshore … Read More

“Shell, Let’s Go Clean Nigeria!”

January 27, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured 2 Comments

Just before dawn yesterday, activists from Friends of the Earth in the Netherlands scaled the front of Shell’s headquarters in the Hague and urged the company to “clean up” its operations in Nigeria. Some activists were dressed as oil-smeared birds. Others held pictures of polluted land or hung plastic strips appearing to smear Shell’s corporate … Read More

What oil subsidies is Obama targeting?

January 26, 2011By Steve KretzmannBlog Post, Featured 1 Comment

Last night, The President once again proposed ending subsidies to the oil industry.  As we’ve said before, this is a great idea, and should be supported in full. That said, although we haven’t seen details, it’s quite unlikely that the Administration is proposing to eliminate all these subsidies.  First, there is an important difference from … Read More

The Oil Boom is Back

January 24, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

A new report by the energy consultancy, PFC Energy, is arguing that the center of the global energy industry is slowly shifting away from the oil majors. Publicly traded companies in Russia, China and Brazil are taking more of the top spots in its influential global ranking of the world’s energy giants. In part to … Read More

A €30 Million Joke

January 21, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

For a long time the concept of carbon trading has had its critics. The primary one is that trading carbon does not really get rid of the problem: the emissions of carbon dioxide. It merely changes pollution into a commodity that can be traded. As the NGO Carbontrade Watch argues: “Carbon offsets allow companies and … Read More

CO2 emissions to rise by 25% in 20 years, says Big Oil

January 20, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

We are on the path to climate chaos, Big Oil has admitted. Both BP and Exxon have conceded that progress on climate change is totally insufficient to stabilize CO2 emissions. Both oil companies have just published their Energy Outlooks, and the outlook looks grim. In a bleak prognosis for success on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, … Read More

Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Take Big Money From Industry

January 19, 2011By Steve KretzmannBlog Post, Separate Oil and State

This post is cross-published from ProPublica. Congress isn’t going to regulate hydraulic fracturing any time soon. But the Department of Interior might. [2] For starters, Interior is mulling whether it should require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use to frack wells drilled on public lands, and already the suggestion has earned Interior Secretary … Read More