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A secret military subsidy – pirates and oil corps
New Internationalist featured a blog from Platform on our new briefing A Secret Subsidy: Oil companies, the Navy and the response to piracy. Here’s what we wrote: This week the Combating Piracy Conference has been taking place in London, behind closed doors. This industry-organised event brings together representatives from European Union, NATO and oil and…
26 Oct 2012 admin -
BP partners with Rosneft, Russia’s top polluter – some background
BP confirmed today that it’s swapping its 50% stake in TNK-BP (which provided about a quarter of the company’s global output) for cash and shares in Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company, becoming a nearly 20% shareholder in it as a result. The two companies have been looking for ways to partner up to exploit…
22 Oct 2012 anna -
Revealed: Vince Cable, ‘Minister for Shell’
Documents obtained by Corporate Watch show that Vince Cable has been acting as “Contact Minister for Shell”. In a letter to Vince Cable, dated 19 March 2012, Malcolm Brinded, (who, at the time of writing, was Chief Executive of Shell Upstream International) thanks Vince Cable for attending a Shell strategy presentation; adding that he hopes…
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An ill wind blows
We know there is a vocal minority of anti-wind campaigners out there, who still cannot see the irony in their statements that wind turbines will destroy their local environment, even in the face of serious flooding across the UK being the latest in a series of ‘funny weathers’ that have gripped the globe this year…
23 Sep 2012 admin -
Shell’s 2012 Arctic drilling shelved
Last week, I wrote about Shell’s dubious ‘historic’ achievement in commencing the first drill hole off the coast of Alaska in the past two decades. Later the same day, Shell announced that it had to stop drilling due to ice approaching the drillship. Now, they’ve had to cancel this year’s drilling altogether. A company update…
17 Sep 2012 anna -
Shell commences Arctic drilling, US regulator releases ‘skimpy’ permit report
“It’s the first time a drill bit has touched the sea floor in the U.S. Chukchi Sea in more than two decades,” – a Shell spokesperson said as the company announced its “historic” first test well in offshore Alaska. And now is not a good time. Shell’s permit to drill was conditional on the company’s…
10 Sep 2012 anna -
Show us the money – will Dodd Frank force oil companies to reveal payments
Last Wednesday oil and gas lobbyists had a very bad day in the office when new US laws were introduced requiring the extractives sector to publish the payments they make to host governments. Industry groups had been aggressively lobbying to water down the regulations and succeeded in delaying their introduction by 16 months. But last…
28 Aug 2012 admin -
Oil money and the Academy
A guest blog post by Dr Alice Bell, an academic and writer interested in relationships between science and the public. She blogs at https://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter @AliceBell BP is to invest £64 million to set up an International Centre for Advanced Materials (BP-ICAM) based at the University of Manchester. It…
23 Aug 2012 admin -
Dutch politicians investigate Shell on Nigeria allegations
Business Day – August 23, 2012
