Thai oil company PTT and the Australian government are struggling to deal with an enormous oil spill of the north coast in the Timor Sea. The leak, which started on August 21st, has created a spill stretching over 70 miles by 25 miles. Yet during the same week, Canberra granted environmental approval to Chevron &…

A warning of accelerated climate change to come. This not the Svalbard of Philip Pullman’s warrior polar bears, but the non-fictional Norwegian Arctic. While government and oil corporations focus on the Arctic’s potential as a great new oil province. (See BP’s own brochure for boasts of “a solid Arctic track record”.) The ice in the Barents Sea…

Lobby groups funded by BP & Shell are organising public rallies in the US to oppose proposed legislation that would cap carbon emissions. The American Petroleum Institute (API) provided “upfront resources” to pay for an events company to organise public protest meetings. The tactic of “astroturfing” has been used by corporations since the 1990s to…

BP brand hypocrisy continues, with Marketing Magazine reporting on the company’s plans for the London Olympics in 2012. Energy company BP has appointed agencies Landor and Ogilvy to handle its sponsorship of London 2012. Tony Hayward, executive director of BP, said that […] as BP is the UK’s biggest company with headquarters in London, the 2012 Olympics…

The main workhorse of Azeri oil production – the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field – will peak in 2010, due to BP and consortium members driving an aggressively fast extraction programme. As the revenues poured in over the last eight years, the state budget soared, covering military expansion, President Aliev’s opulent lifestyle and doubtful infrastructure projects including a…

AlJazeera International (in English) recently broadcast several investigative programmes on popular movements opposing destructive fossil fuel projects, as part of its People & Power series. The shows cover local resistance to Barrick Gold in Argentina/Chile, Talisman’s oil operations in the Peruvian Amazon and mountain removal coal mining in the Appalachians. What the film-makers didn’t realise…

Activists in Mayo, Ireland have been resisting Shell’s efforts to lay an illegal onshore pipeline in their community. The courage of these activists, who have risked jail sentences and put their lives on the line, has succeeded in delaying the construction of the pipeline frustrating Shell’s plan to access Ireland’s gas fields. Shell-to-Sea is  an…

Maura Harrington – imprisoned for her opposition to Shell: “We all have successes and failures. I was a teacher, my failures work inside the gates at Glengad and Bellanaboy, my successes are outside the gates”. Second email from George, supporting the community resistance against Shell’s gas plans in Rossport, Ireland: I drove over to Rossport with Paul…

remember saro-wiwa commissioned leading performance poet Zena Edwards to write and perform a new work, reflecting upon the role of oil companies in the deteriorating human rights situation in the Niger Delta. We have reproduced her poem and a photo by renowned photographer Ed Kashi, which inspired the commission, and included a video of Zena…