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
Arctic Oil and Gas
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
Lloyds Warns of Arctic Drilling Risk
Late last week, the Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined plans to create “globally competitive conditions” to attract foreign investment in Russia’s largely unexplored Arctic. “Offshore fields – especially in the Arctic – are without any exaggeration our strategic reserve for the 21st century,” Putin told a meeting attended by the heads of Rosneft and Gazprom. … Read More
RIP Exxon Valdez
For some Saturday’s Anniversary would have been a painful reminder of the reckless behaviour of Big Oil. It was on the 24 March 1989, that the Exxon Valdez ploughed into rocks in Prince William Sound in Alaska spilling at least 11 million gallons of oil. Although, the Exxon Valdez’s Anniversary no longer makes the news elsewhere, … Read More
“Desperate” Shell Goes to Court Over Arctic Drilling
Last week I blogged on the landmark legal case against Shell by Nigerians that was being heard in the Supreme Court. That’s not the only court-room Shell was in last week. In an extraordinary preemptive legal strike the oil giant filed suit against more than a dozen environmental organisations that Shell believes might challenge its … Read More
Arctic “should remain off-limits to drilling”
For a long time now many environmental organisations and front-line communities have warned about the dangers of drilling in the Arctic. Even before the Exxon Valdez scarred Alaska in 1989 people warned that drilling in the high north can have terrible consequences. And there was one major lesson from the Exxon Valdez: oil is much … Read More
British MPs to Examine Arctic Drilling Risks
So the Arctic oil rush gathers apace. The Norwegian oil firm Statoil has made a second big oil discovery in the Barents Sea in less than a year. Statoil confirmed that the new oil find, called Havis, might contain some 200 to 300 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent. If you add these to the … Read More
Cairn Suffers Another Greenland Setback
In the rush for the Arctic, Cairn Energy is currently the environmental villain of the moment. Despite the disastrous risks of a spill and a clearly inadequate spill response plan, the company is leading the way in drilling off Greenland. As I blogged last week, a spill in the region could be catastrophic, and Cairn … Read More
Arctic Spill Would Be “Uncontrollable” Catastrophe
Following up last week’s news about the tie up between Exxon and Rosneft and the dangers of Arctic drilling, today’s Independent runs a disturbing warning from a distinguished polar scientist about the dangers of a spill in the region. For a long time now, the environmental organisation Greenpeace has been shouting from the roof-tops about … Read More
Exxon Beats BP to Arctic Prize
It will not just be Bob Dudley from BP who will be aghast at the news that Exxon and Rosneft have signed a historical deal to develop Arctic oil reserves, but many people from Alaska too. Just months after BP failed in a bid to form a strategic alliance with Rosneft, ExxonMobil has outsmarted its … Read More