BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico refuses to go away. The Daily Telegraph in the UK is reporting that BP is being sued for tens of millions of dollars in America US by institutional investors. The investors – the South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, Skandia Global Funds and GAM Fund Management – … Read More
oil spills
Gazprom’s Oil Response Plan “Illegal”
Much of the focus recently about the dangers of Arctic drilling has focused on Shell’s plans to drill off Alaska. But let’s not forget about the real and growing dangers to the Russian Arctic too. Once again it seems that the oil industry is not prepared for the risks of a spill and maybe operating … Read More
Tar sands tax loophole highlighted in two more reports
A couple months ago, Oil Change International worked with Earth Track and NRDC to expose a huge loophole that allows tar sands producers to avoid paying their fair share into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Oil producers generally pay into this fund, but through a exemption in the tax code, tar sands oil producers … Read More
A solemn anniversary, scary new report, and hope around the corner in the fight against big oil
Today marks the two-year anniversary of a massive oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Michigan…a spill whose effects are still being felt in many ways today. By the time the spill was stopped in the late summer of 2010, some 1.2 million gallons of corrosive tar sands oil had been released into the … Read More
Nigeria: Shell to Pay $5 Billion Fine?
Finally after fifty years of the Nigerian government playing softly, softly with Shell, is the country about to start playing hard-ball with the oil giant? The country’s oil regulator has asked Shell to pay a whopping $5 billion fine for a spill off the country’s southern coast last December. Late last year there was a … Read More
Shell’s History of “Corporate Malfeasance”
Poor old Shell. Last week it was humiliated in a spoof action by Greenpeace and the Yes Men. This week its corporate reputation takes a battering in a report by the Alaska Wilderness League. The 51 page report, published as Shell gears up to start drilling in the Arctic, makes devastating reading. It concludes that … Read More
BP and the Attack on Academic Freedom
Two leading oceanographers who worked on the impact of BP’s devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill have accused BP of attacking academic freedom after the oil giant successfully subpoenaed thousands of confidential emails related to their research. The two scientists, Richard Camilli and Christopher Reddy, from the respected Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have had to give … Read More
Shell’s $4 Billion Arctic Lobby Campaign
In July, barring any last minute legal challenges, oil giant Shell looks set to cross the rubicon and start drilling offshore in the Arctic. Many environmentalists and indigenous communities have long fought and feared this day. Many of the veterans of the Exxon Valdez have long argued that the lessons of that disaster have still … Read More
70,000 Ask Shell to Clean Up in Nigeria
Seventeen years ago I was one of many protestors at Shell’s AGM in London at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Centre that lies in the shadow of Big Ben, near London’s Parliament. There were two issues facing the oil giant that day: in Nigeria the Ogoni playwright, Ken Saro-Wiwa, lay in a disgusting and degrading humid … Read More
Irrational Exemption: Tar sands pipeline subsidies and why they must end
This briefing finds that the transport of tar sands oil through pipelines in the United States is exempt from payments into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which creates a free ride worth over $375 million to tar sands oil producers between 2010 and 2017.