For years Big Oil has repeated the dirty tactics of Big Tobacco. And once again it has been found doing so again.
refining
Fires, storms and the energy independence myth
All the talk of Hurricane Isaac and the RNC has so far failed to notice the gaping hole appearing in what is not only the Romney/Ryan energy platform but also the platform of the entire North American oil and gas industry. And frankly, while politicians might be forgiven (and I mean might) for not fully … Read More
A big mess at Motiva and why Gulf Coast refiners are making a killing
While Chevron’s Richmond refinery has been making the news lately with a very visible incident, our attention has been drawn to less noticed recent events in America’s biggest refining center on the Gulf Coast, where what was to become the country’s largest refinery also ran into a spot of trouble. You’d think that if you … Read More
Locals Vent Anger After Chevron Refinery Fire
The fire that engulfed Chevron’s refinery late on Monday night in Richmond, California may now be extinguished, but worrying questions remain about the company’s ongoing safety record at the refinery. The fire caused a huge toxic black cloud to sweep over the city and other parts of the San Francisco Bay area. In the direct … Read More
BP refinery rollover shows tar sands refineries need to clean up
It’s taken four years and millions of dollars in lawyers for BP to finally agree to do what it should have done in the first place at its Whiting, Indiana refinery. The refinery has been constructing new equipment to enable it to switch to 100% tar sands heavy oil processing, a $3.6 billion investment. But … Read More
East Coast refinery shut downs are a symptom of the tar sands oil rush
 …in the long term, what the industry has affected is not increased security via Canadian oil to the gulf coast, but a concentration of the nation’s refining capacity in the heart of the nation’s hurricane corridor. The lessons of 2005 have clearly not been heeded. Pennsylvania labor activists marched on Capitol Hill yesterday in protest … Read More
“Everything Koch stood for was a lie”
Ever since Greenpeace outed the Koch brothers as the largest financiers of climate change denial, the secretive brothers have started getting much more media attention. The fact that they are also major backers of the controversial Tea Party movement – with its loathing of environmental protection and dismissal of climate change – has added to … Read More
The Good News, the Bad and the Ugly
First the good news. BP says its “static kill” on its Macondo well has succeeded so far, describing the moment as a “significant milestone”. The “static kill”, which started yesterday, involved pumping heavy drilling mud from the top of the well slowly down, pushing the oil back down into the reservoir. The oil was stopped … Read More
Putting Tar Sands in Your Tank …
Disaster One. New estimates put the amount of oil per day pouring into the Gulf of Mexico at one million gallons a day. If this is so, BP’s disaster may have spilt more oil than the Exxon Valdez, when at least eleven million gallons poured from the stricken tanker. Disaster Two. There is another ecological … Read More
Valero’s Flawed “Voices for Energy”
So the trickle turns into a tide. They are all at it now. There is a sudden rush amongst oil and gas companies in the US to garner grasssroots support to attack the Climate bill. Just days after Greenpeace released an internal memo from the oil boys at the American Petroleum Institute, detailing plans to … Read More