Conservationists and environmentalists in Australia are celebrating a major victory after the oil giant BP announced that it is abandoning its hugely controversial plans to drill for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight.
A report for investors on why Shell’s and BP’s tar sands plans are a bad bet
Despite growing international condemnation, oil giant BP seems intent on drilling in the highly sensitive Great Australian Bight off the country’s southern coast, which is home to one of the largest breeding populations of endangered southern right whales in the world.
As BP yet again sponsors different Olympic teams as well as the Paralympics, other athletes ask: “Is it right to steal the future of millions of people”
Oh dear, BP. Last week was a lesson in how corporate sponsorship of the arts backfires badly.
The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Another certainty is that you know that the top executives of controversial companies absolutely hate the one day in the year that they are accountable to their shareholders: the AGM.
We have known for years that Big Oil companies like BP sponsor iconic arts institutions in the UK as a way of greenwashing their image and helping the company with its “social licence to operate”.
Dressed in a veneer of concern about climate change, in fact BP’s outlook is a public relations exercise, designed to boost fossil fuels and undermine public faith in clean alternatives. Meanwhile it deflects responsibility to government or to coal companies, to distract from its own extraction of oil and gas.
Oil giant BP sent shock-waves through the industry this morning with what has been described as a “jaw-dropping” loss.
In a major set-back for the oil giant, BP’s highly controversial application to drill in one of Australia’s last great wilderness areas, the Great Australian Bight, has been rejected for falling short of environmental standards.
