http://priceofoil.org Oil Change International campaigns to expose the true costs of oil and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy. We are dedicated to identifying and overcoming political barriers to that transition. Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:01:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Six months ago, the campaign organisation Global Witness exposed discrepancies in the oil figures for Sudan, raising questions as to whether the revenues were being shared fairly between the North and South of the country. The revenues are important as they under-pin the 2005 peace agreement, which brought to an end ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/18/sudan%e2%80%99s-oil-figures-don%e2%80%99t-add-up-undermining-peace-deal/ They are two moments in history, intricately linked, although poles apart. Today Peter Voser,  the chief executive of Shell, outlines the company’s financial and production strategy for the coming year. Once again Nigeria was mentioned as a key country where the company had added strategic reserves. "These are exciting times for Shell”, ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/16/soyinka-defends-nigerias-militants-as-attacks-continue/ For many people this would be a no-brainer – but the billions being poured into dirty oil in Canada's tar sands could be spent on clean energy instead to help decarbonise western economies. Or it could be spent on clean water to help the poor live. In their new report, the ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/15/dirty-oil-money-could-fund-clean-energy-or-water/ Just days after outlining its business strategy BP is offering a massive $7 billion in cash to buy Devon Energy’s deepwater assets. In a broad-ranging deal, BP will pay Devon Energy $7 billion for assets in Brazil, Azerbaijan and the US deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Interestingly the deal also involves extraction of ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/11/has-bp-backed-a-7-billion-wrong-horse/ Pardon the title, but the Wall Street Journal has an extremely interesting interview with the top dog at Shell, Peter Voser. He admits that Shell is fast becoming a gas company rather than an oil company. “Shell started quite a while back, actually, to put a lot of emphasis on gas” ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/09/peter-voser-has-a-gas-problem/ The oil and gas industry likes you to think that, compared to oil, gas is a cleaner, greener alternative – a great bridging fuel between the hydrocarbon age and the renewable age. Compared to oil, this may be so – if and it is a big if, the gas is normal ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/08/shell-offers-to-buy-oz-gas-company-but-just-how-clean-is-it/ For all you romantic film-buffs out there, this week-end’s Oscars is a fight between an ex-husband and wife partnership: James Cameron’s Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt locker. Those rooting for Avatar include a collation of 50 Indigenous and environmental groups who yesterday ran a great advert in the celebrity magazine ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/05/welcome-to-canadas-avatar-sands/ Earlier in the week I blogged about how British banks were under fire for their investment in the tar sands. But they are not the only ones. There are also home-grown banks investing in the destruction of their own country. Yesterday, over 170 people rallied outside of the Royal Bank of Canada’s ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/04/rbc-criticised-for-causing-an-%e2%80%9cenvironmental-holocaust%e2%80%9d/ The headlines from BP’s Strategy presentation yesterday are all about how chief executive Tony Hayward  promised to boost annual profits by $3bn over the next two or three years. In a frank admission, Hayward said that BP’s financial importance over the last few years had not been acceptable and had “some ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/03/bp-looks-to-iraq-and-long-term-to-the-arctic/ So seven years later it will come down to this weekend.  Whether President Obama can withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq by August will be decided by the Iraqi elections this weekend. If the election passes off peacefully, American soldiers will probably go home on schedule. But if there is ... http://priceofoil.org/2010/03/02/oil-dominating-iraqi-election-campaign/