We have known for years that the days of finding easy oil outside the Middle East are over. It means that the oil industry has to go into fragile ecological areas like the Arctic or exploit dirty unconventionals like the tar sands or shale gas.
Brazil
Call on Governments to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Hundreds of governments and thousands of stakeholders will meet at the Rio+20 Conference in Brazil this month to chart a future for the health of the planet, our human family and economies worldwide. The question is whether that future will include continuing public fossil fuel subsidies, which could climb to a staggering US$775 billion to an estimated US$1 trillion … Read More
Chevron Faces Possible Brazil Drilling Ban
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 … Read More
Oil Spill off Rio Sets Chevron at the Center of Scandal
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 … Read More
World Bank Executives: Stop Defending Dirty Energy for the Poor
The World Bank Group, perhaps the best-known publicly-funded international development institution, is pitched in an important battle over the future of its energy lending. Unfortunately, if some Bank executives have their way, the new Energy Strategy will become a blueprint for straddling the world’s poorest nations and people with dangerous and polluting energy. That’s because … Read More
“Brazil is the future for the oil industry”..
Are investors put off by the risks of ultra deepwater drilling after the Deepwater Horizon disaster? If the frenzy down in Brazil is anything to go by – the answer is a staggering no. Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras, has just raised a whopping $70bn in the biggest share issue in corporate history. And the … Read More
From Brazil to Nigeria, Shell Fights Pollution Allegations
Firstly pollution in Brazil: At the end of last week a Brazilian court fined the local units of Shell and BASF a total of BRL1.1 billion ($654 million) in compensation and medical costs to workers who were harmed by contamination at a chemicals plant in Paulinia, Sao Paulo. The Paulinia unit was built by Shell … Read More