The Western consortium developing the enormous Karachaganak natural gas field in Kazakhstan was fined $21 million yesterday for excessive dumping waste. British BG, Italian Eni and American Chevron, the companies developing the field on the the border with Russia, were convicted of environmental violations in 2008 by a regional court. Analysts and reporters believe that the penalty…

Tar sands extraction in Canada is devastating Indigenous communities, wildlife and vast areas of boreal forests, as well as being many times more carbon-intensive to produce than ‘conventional’ oil. “We are seeing a terrifyingly high rate of cancer in Fort Chipewyan where I live. We are convinced that these cancers are linked to the Tar…

On 15 February the notorious ESMAD ‘anti-strike’ police attacked a community and workers’ picket line by the Tauramena BP plant in Casanare, Colombia.   Three workers were hospitalised and several children affected heavily by tear gas. Workers at the BP plant at Tauramena, part of the Cusiana oil field in Casanare, Colombia have been protesting…

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…