70,000 Ask Shell to Clean Up in Nigeria

May 22, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

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

April 16, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

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

March 26, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post

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

British MPs to Examine Arctic Drilling Risks

January 10, 2012By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured

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

September 13, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured 1 Comment

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

Exxon Beats BP to Arctic Prize

August 31, 2011By Andy RowellBlog Post, Featured 1 Comment

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