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Who Owns the Wind? – the promise of a publicly owned renewable energy system
Blog post -
Oct 3, 2022
The North Westerly gale billows and shakes the heavy white pvc of the marquee on the Portsoy harbourside, Aberdeenshire. Festival goers drift from stall to stall, under the pallid light of sun through plastic, dithering over the t-towels and pots of honey. At one end of the tent, a wall is taken up by a...

Tectonic shifts – the energy crisis and the leap beyond – The Economic War, part 4
Blog post -
Apr 4, 2022
Shell declares it may go back into Cambo and the oilfield’s exploration license is extended by two years. The British government pushes for renewed drilling in the UK North Sea. There is public outcry at the Chancellor’s failure to defend households from the attack on living standards driven by price inflation. The Russian government announces...

How to Capture the Future and Store Capital – the plans for CCS in Liverpool Bay
Blog post -
Nov 5, 2021
You can see the future from Formby Beach. You don’t even need to climb up on one of steep sand dunes to catch a glimpse of it. It is out there yellow and white lights blinking in the grey dusk away to the North West. It has supplanted the red dots of the turbines on...

$450 million in US ‘development’ finance for fracking in Patagonia
Blog post -
Sep 12, 2019
The US development finance corporation OPIC has just loaned $450 million to a large fracking project in Argentinian Patagonia – despite objections from eight US senators, Indigenous rights concerns, and the climate crisis. The two loans will fund Vista Oil & Gas and Aleph Midstream (respectively sister company and subsidiary to London-listed Riverstone Energy) to...

More Like Texas: US state involvement in the Vaca Muerta mega-project in Argentina
Publication -
Sep 12, 2019
Read the briefing (pdf) – Leer en castellano (pdf) As US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in June 2018, the aim of US foreign energy policy in Argentina was to help the country become “more like Texas” by bringing US business to work on unlocking Patagonia’s shale oil and gas reserves. The US State Energy...
Ser como Texas: participación del gobierno de Estados Unidos en el megaproyecto Vaca Muerta
Publication -
Sep 12, 2019
Leer el informe (pdf) – o – Read the briefing in English (pdf) En junio de 2018, el Secretario de Energía, Rick Perry, dijo que el objetivo de la política exterior de Estados Unidos en Argentina era ayudar al país a “parecer más a Texas”, llevando empresas estadounidenses a trabajar en la extracción de las...

Of Plastics and Brexit – the struggle against the new lords of oil & gas
Blog post -
Apr 4, 2019
On 16th January 2019 news was leaked through the German paper Handelsblatt of The Alliance to End Plastic Waste. A new industrial coalition that will invest $1billion over the next five years in a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world. Here was a powerful body of major corporations determining to...

PHOTOS: ‘Fracking rig’ & 10-metre projection protests fossil fuel finance on doorstep of UK government export body
Press release -
Nov 30, 2018
Contact: Eliana Harrigan, Fossil Free London, +44 7541507517. Anna Markova, Platform, [email protected], +447942044472 Images available, credit Alban Grosdidier. As G20 governments gear up for their summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the climate talks are set to get underway in Katowice, the UK’s export finance department (UKEF) was hit by protests yesterday over its financing of oil...

UKEF: don’t frack Patagonia, don’t fund fossil fuels
Site page -
Nov 27, 2018
The UK government pledges billions of pounds every year in finance for UK businesses abroad through UK Export Finance (UKEF). In 2017 UKEF announced a new £1 billion credit line for UK businesses working in Argentina, with then minister Greg Hands stressing that “the UK’s expertise in areas like infrastructure, green energy and healthcare” were...

To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories
Blog post -
Nov 27, 2018
In the flurry of a Tuesday afternoon, I receive an unexpected e-mail from Vicki Carroll. The header has your name in it Bruce, and I know instinctively within an instant what the message holds. I hover a while and then open the text to read the inevitable. You have stepped over, passed through the...

G20 summit in Argentina clashes over climate, fracking continues backstage
Site page -
Nov 26, 2018
By Observatorio Petrolero Sur, Buenos Aires, Argentina. – The G20 summit in Buenos Aires concludes Argentina’s G20 presidency. One of the year’s key themes and controversies has been climate change and the role of fossil fuels. In June the G20 energy ministers signed a communiqué highlighting the role of natural gas in “supporting transitions to lower...

A False Promise of Prosperity
Publication -
Nov 18, 2018
An analysis of UK Prosperity Fund support to the oil and gas industry Based on official Foreign Office data, this briefing reveals that the UK’s Foreign Office spent funds from the Official Development Aid budget to promote shale gas drilling in China, as well as supporting expansion of oil and gas industries in Brazil, Mexico,...