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Of Plastics and Brexit – the struggle against the new lords of oil & gas
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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...
UKEF: don’t frack Patagonia, don’t fund fossil fuels
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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...
G20 summit in Argentina clashes over climate, fracking continues backstage
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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...
BP Chairman: “fracking is a great opportunity” but don’t ask us about the risks
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May 21, 2018
Today I attended BP’s annual shareholder meeting alongside Fernando Cabrera from OPSur (Argentina). Fernando came to challenge BP’s board on the dangers from their fracking operations. BP’s Argentinian arm Pan American Energy is using fracking frighteningly close to Patagonia’s freshwater supplies and fruit orchards (see our report “BP’s Fracking Secrets” for more on this). Here’s...
The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10
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May 1, 2018
On the evening of Thursday 26th April 2018, it was warm and sunny in London. President Ilham Aliyev strode down Downing Street and was met by Prime Minister Theresa May with smile and a handshake. They posed for the cameras on the red carpet outside No 10 and then retired inside. A short formal chat...
The slow dismantling the house of oil – The Gulbenkian Foundation divests
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Mar 18, 2018
Quite unexpected comes remarkable news! Lucy Neal, a long-term part of the Platform family, e-mails out of the blue, forwarding an article from the Algarve Daily News, published on 1st February in southern Portugal. The headline reads: ‘Gulbenkian Foundation gets out of the oil business’ That truly is unexpected. Lucy had not foreseen this coming...
Communal Memory – the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria
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Feb 22, 2018
I’m holding in my hands a report published by Amnesty International in November last year – ‘A Criminal Enterprise? Shell’s involvement in human rights violations in Nigeria in the 1990s’. It analyses in forensic detail exactly how much Shell staff knew about, and were involved in supporting, the actions by the Nigerian military taken against...
BP’s solution to the climate crisis: switch to gas
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May 17, 2017
Gas will solve the climate crisis. This was the main message that BP’s CEO Bob Dudley wanted to get across at today’s annual general shareholder meeting. And it’s dangerous… Bob Dudley, BP chief, says if you closed all coal fired power plants tomorrow and replaced them with gas you would reach 2C warming scenario — Emily...
Power Station Giant Down… and commemorate!
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Sep 12, 2016
Last Wednesday, at 11am, another giant landmark in the history of UK fossil-fuel power crashed to the ground. Never mind a landmark, this was also a giant seamark that aided navigation at the start of the Thames and Medway estuaries for hundreds of vessels every day. Its end came with two huge bangs that juddered...
Walking the Line. New Interactive Documentary
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Mar 8, 2016
In Italy, Azerbaijan and the UK people are fighting against the devastating impacts of import pipelines and wresting back control over their energy system. In this beautiful documentary we made with Global Motion, Re:common and Counter Balance we meet the people who live alongside the Euro-Caspian Mega Pipeline and are organising against this gargantuan piece...
Stranding the Leviathan – a report from the Shell AGM in Den Haag, Netherlands
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May 22, 2015
We are in the dim light and red velvet of the Circustheatre in Den Haag for the Shell AGM. Up on the podium are the assembled bishops of the company. Eight in the back row all non-executives. Five in the front row: the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Executive, the Chairman and two non-excutives. Behind...
Azerbaijani activists and journalists not free to collect Freedom of Expression Award
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Mar 20, 2015
Guest blog from Index on Censorship Index on Censorship gave a special award at our 15th Freedom of Expression Awards – to a group of people in Azerbaijan not able to join us to collect it. Over the past eight months, Azerbaijani authorities, under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev, have been engaged in relentless...
