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Tar Sands: “No get-out-of-jail-free card”
Andy Rowell
Feb22
If you read some of the Canadian press coverage, a recent scientific study has offered the pro-tar sands movement a real fillip in its attempts to spin its dirty fuel as “ethical oil” that is no dirtier than conventional crude. The Canadians are now essentially arguing it gives them the scientific back-up to carry on…
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Bully-Boy Canada Threatens EU (Again)
Andy Rowell
Feb21
For over a year now I have been working on and off with Friends of the Earth Europe examining the dirty lobbying by the Canadians on the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive. Last summer we produced a report entitled “Canada’s dirty lobby diary”. The report revealed the extent of Canada’s lobbying – one of the most…
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Hypocritical Heartland Threatens Critics
Andy Rowell
Feb20
The climate sceptic think tank, the Heartland Institute, that last week was the victim of a devastating leak of information, has decided that attack is the best form of defence and has started threatening organisations and websites that published the leaked documents. It is interesting to dissect how Heartland, which has been in crisis mode…
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East Coast refinery shut downs are a symptom of the tar sands oil rush
Lorne Stockman
Feb16
…in the long term, what the industry has affected is not increased security via Canadian oil to the gulf coast, but a concentration of the nation’s refining capacity in the heart of the nation’s hurricane corridor. The lessons of 2005 have clearly not been heeded. Pennsylvania labor activists marched on Capitol Hill yesterday in protest…
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Climate Sceptics Exposed
Andy Rowell
Feb15
It was not probably the Valentine’s present the leading climate sceptic organisation, the Heartland Institute, was expecting. But after years of exploiting ClimateGate and leaks from climate scientists, yesterday they were on the receiving end of their very own leak. The climate denial watch-dog, DeSmogBlog, was leaked details of Heartland’s strategy and funding documents exposing…
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Over 600,000 Say No to KXL
Andy Rowell
Feb14
Once again it is the many versus the money. Starting at noon yesterday, a coalition of thirty or so environmental organisations, including Oil Change International (OCI) and 350.org set out to gather at least 500,000 signatures with 24 hours to stop the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The initiative came as a response to moves within…
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Falklands: “Conflict is Over Oil”
Andy Rowell
Feb13
Are we slowly edging towards another war over oil? Thirty years after Britain and Argentina last went to war over the Falklands, the diplomatic stakes are rising rapidly. This could just be a great game of diplomatic brinkmanship where neither side really wants a repeat of the conflict from decades ago. However this time at…
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Keystone XL benefits from taxpayer subsidies
Lorne Stockman
Feb08
Sen. Mitch McConnell claimed recently that the Keystone XL Pipeline “doesn’t require a penny of our taxpayer money all the president has to do is approve it.” But our research reveals many places that the pipeline project benefits from many taxpayer subsidies. The refineries that are linked to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as…
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The Hidden Danger of the Gas Boom
Andy Rowell
Feb08
The hype surrounding the US gas industry continues to grow as America moves ever closer to its cherished dream of energy independence. Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that “the U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo…
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The big, the bad and the subsidized
Lorne Stockman
Feb07
Sources: Compiled from the quarterly results of each company, publicly available on the investor pages of each company’s websites. $135 billion Not the 2010 GDP of Hungary or Kuwait, no it’s slightly more than either of those. In fact, if it was a figure for the 2010 GDP of a nation, it would rank…
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