Nearly three months have passed since C Words closed and I’ve been re-reading the blog entries, my and others’ copious notes and records, the heaps of rich and mostly positive feedback we’ve collected on paper, in emails, interviews on video, audio, and anecdotally. This compensates for the tiny art-critical response: one interesting and thoughtful review…

Oil contracts signed secretly in Uganda and exposed by PLATFORM will allow major oil companies to flare gas with impunity in the country’s Lake Alberta region on the border with Congo. As the New York Times reports: “Production is going to start in 2010 with no environmental assessment having yet been carried out,” said Platform’s…

According to the FT, industrial action by 14 harbour pilots at Milford Haven later this week could seriously disrupt supplies of oil and gas to the UK. The port includes Exxon’s RBS-financed South Hook LNG Terminal which imports gas from Qatar. The story highlights yet again the importance of projects like Workers Climate Action. Port strike risks…

An academic paper presented at a conference in India this week proposes that rapid fossil fuel extraction could change the planet’s tilt and spin. Don’t know enough about the science, so it might not be credible at all. But I can already see the PR teams lobbying for equal fossil fuel expansion potential everywhere in…

Unconventional shale gas has been discovered in the waters off Liverpool by IGas. Shale gas is natural gas lodged within shale rock, until recently largely inaccessible. Financial viability has increased with the expansion of hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – the pumping of complex and polluting liquids into the rocks, to fracture them horizontally. This has led to major concerns…

For 11 years the people of County Mayo in Ireland have been resisting Shell’s efforts to develop a dangerous high pressure raw gas pipeline. Pat O’Donnell, a prominent local fisherman and anti-Shell campaigner defending his family and livelihood has been sentenced to 7 months in jail. Retired Maura Harrington was also convicted of charges including…

Concerned employees could be joining global campaigners to demand changes from Shell; including an end to daily gas flaring and oil spills in the Niger Delta. Stories in the Financial Times and The Times today revealed that: Contact details for 176,000 employees and contractors of Royal Dutch Shell have been sent to environmental and human…

Nigerian investors attempting to end gas flaring in Nigeria have publicly accused Shell and other international oil companies of obstructing their plans. The Nigerian companies signed a Memo of Understanding with the Nigerian government to divert the gas to domestic power generation in December 2009. The international oil companies continue to flare gas causing a…