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Posts in Pollution

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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EU: Fracking Laws Are Adequate, For Now
Andy Rowell
Jan31
In a decision that will both dismay and worry environmental campaigners and communities facing fracking across Europe, the European commission has concluded that existing laws are adequate to cover the controversial drilling technique. A new report undertaken for the Commission by the Belgian law firm Philippe & Partners, argues that there is no need for…
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$New-York-anti-fracking-protest$
Fracking Causes Blowouts too
Andy Rowell
Jan17
Another day and yet another reported problem with fracking. Canadian regulators are now investigating the possibility that fracking could have caused a blowout in a neighbouring well which was producing oil several hundred metres away. The country’s Energy Resource Conservation Board was alerted last Friday after a landowner saw black fluid spraying fifteen metres into…
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Appeal Court Upholds Chevron Guilty Verdict
Andy Rowell
Jan04
Chevron has been found guilty again. Yesterday, an Ecuadorian appeals court upheld a ruling that the oil giant should pay US$18 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon. It was last February that a local judge had ordered Chevron to pay US$8.6 billion in damages, but the amount was doubled to US$18 billion because Chevron…
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Tar Sands: “No Safe Way to Market”
Andy Rowell
Nov30
The top brass of BP and Shell will have not been amused this morning when they opened their Financial Times to see a half page advert staring at them about the ecological cost of the tar sands. The advert, entitled: “Tar sands – 23 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil” demands that…
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Chevron Faces Possible Brazil Drilling Ban
Andy Rowell
Nov22
Eighteen months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we have another country threatening to ban an oil company after a deep water spill. Yesterday it was Brazil’s turn to say it might ban Chevron from drilling in its deep water oilfields as punishment for the 3,000 barrel oil spill from the company’s Frade project. Chevron has…
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Oil Spill off Rio Sets Chevron at the Center of Scandal
Traci Romine
Nov17
Chevron is at the center of a scandal over the oil spill in the offshore Campos Basin Frade field about 230 miles from the coast of northeast Rio de Janeiro. Originally the company said that the spill was natural seepage from the field. Well, no, it appears it was not. The scandal began to unravel on…
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New Zealand’s “Worst Maritime Disaster”
Andy Rowell
Oct11
First things first – this is no Deepwater Horizon. But it is still being called a disaster and it looks like its going to get worse. The 47,000 tonne container ship Rena is currently grounded on a reef in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty and it is leaking heavy fuel oil after running aground last…
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“Everything Koch stood for was a lie”
Andy Rowell
Oct04
Ever since Greenpeace outed the Koch brothers as the largest financiers of climate change denial, the secretive brothers have started getting much more media attention. The fact that they are also major backers of the controversial Tea Party movement – with its loathing of environmental protection and dismissal of climate change – has added to…
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The Flaring Scandal that Shames the US
Andy Rowell
Sep28
Twenty years ago, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was then largely unknown in the west either as an environmental activist or writer, started touring the capitals of Europe to drum up support for the Ogoni campaign against the oil giant Shell. Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni had many issues with Shell – the fact that they had received…
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