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Oil sell-off by stealth
Iraq’s oil service contracts are more than they seem 26 June 2008 By Greg Muttitt, Co-Director of PLATFORM Published on niqash.org Also available in Arabic and Kurdish Next Monday, the Iraqi federal government is set to sign oil development contracts with BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Total – their first since their 1925 concession was cancelled in the early 1970s.…
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Shell blasted on Iraq oil – ‘Plans risk more conflict’
Protest at annual shareholder meeting British oil giant Shell threatens to trigger greater conflict in Iraq with plans to control the development, production and depletion of Iraq’s oil reserves, campaigners warn today. This warning, from the coalition Hands Off Iraqi Oil, comes as Shell holds its annual meeting amid growing resistance to the company’s bid…
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No Oil Law in Sight – Opposition Intensifies
Eighteen months since its first deadline and a year since cabinet approval, Iraq’s controversial oil law is still not on the statute book. The last four months have seen a consolidation of protests worldwide over the Bush administration’s top benchmark. Opponents of the oil law and the economic occupation it represents, including oil unions and…
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind
This article was first published in Platform’s Carbon Web newsletter, issue 9. Is carbon capture and storage a safe climate mitigation option? As climate change increasingly becomes a defining political theme for the 21st Century, coal, oil and gas companies have not suffered the existential crisis that might have been expected. Instead, they are betting…
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Burning Capital – Exit Strategy II
Back to Black – This article was first published in Platform’s Carbon Web newsletter, issue 9. John Browne is not the first head of BP to leave under a cloud. After Robert Horton, chairman & CEO from 1990-92, was ‘encouraged’ to leave his post, the corporate initiative with which he was identified – ‘Project 1990’…
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“Somewhere as Yet Undiscovered”: Thoughts on Power, Desk Killing and Resistance
Article by Dan Gretton in Vertigo: Volume 3, Issue 9; Summer 2008 ‘Reich Secret Business: Berlin, 5th June 1942 Modifications to special vehicles now in service at Kulmhof (Chelmno) and for those now being built Since December 1941, 97,000 have been processed by the 3 vehicles in service with no major incidents. However, in the…
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Hellfire Economics: Multinational companies and the contract dispute over Kashagan, the world’s largest undeveloped oilfield
Kazakhstan is set to lose up to $20 billion in the next 10 years, due to an unfair contract to extract the world’s largest undeveloped oilfield. These are the findings of a report released today by development and environment organisations, as a dispute between the Kazakhstan government and oil companies failed today to reach its…
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The white man’s burden and ‘oil for peace’ in Iraq
Take up the White Man’s burden The savage wars of peace Fill full the mouth of Famine and bid the sickness cease. Rudyard Kipling, 1899. – This report was first published in Platform’s Carbon Web newsletter, issue 8. Pressure for Iraq’s controversial oil law intensified throughout the summer, with increasingly overt threats to topple the…
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Exit Strategy – BP and the Refuelling of Heathrow
This report was first published in Platform’s Carbon Web newsletter, issue 8. A climate change delivery system Imagine a 747 departing from Heathrow. Don’t look at the body of the plane, but at the fuel tanks. In the first 600 seconds after take-off the engines consume 200 gallons of Jet A high-octane fuel. The Jet…
