In the wake of plummeting profits, spiralling exploration costs and increasing scepticism among other oil majors about commercial prospects in the US Arctic, pension savers across the UK are urging Shell shareholders to call on the company to abandon plans for high-cost, high-risk drilling projects in the US Arctic Ocean. The project is a shareholder…
Today Shell announced it was canceling its 2014 drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. This is a guest blog by Faith Gemmill, Executive Director of Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), on the court decision that forced Shell’s hand, and the Indigenous rights context behind it. Last week the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit…
Yesterday a coalition of Alaska Native and environmental groups won against Arctic oil drilling in a Court of Appeals in the US. The Court ruled that the US government sold leases in the Chukchi Sea in 2008 illegally. Here’s a quick review of the history of the case and what the decision might mean. What…
Mika Minio-Paluello, Anna Galkina and James Marriott travelled in North America as part of a tour over September and October to promote The Oil Road – Journeys from the Caspian to the City of London. The eighth of a series of blogs on the journey comes from New York… It was Maurice Bridgeman who really…
Oil company mega-profits are being made at the expense of the public purse, as youth centres shut, hospitals struggle and the queues at food banks grow. Companies like BP & Shell receive major government support including direct subsidies and military and diplomatic services, but seem to pay very small amounts of UK tax in comparison…
On Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year when in southern Alaska there’s only a dull half-light for a handful of hours, Shell’s immense drilling rig Kulluk was dragged out to sea from Dutch Harbour, bound for the port of Seattle. This 28,000 tonne machine was being pulled past the Aleutian Islands though worsening…
On 8th January 2013, the U.S. Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, announced a review of the 2012 Alaskan Arctic offshore drilling programme “to review practices and identify challenges as well as lessons learned.” The review to be completed within 60 days will focus on the successive setbacks encountered by Shell during 2012. These include its failure…
Shell’s Annual General Meeting tomorrow is unlikely to go calmly. The company’s problems range from anger over excessive executive pay to spills in the Niger delta. At this time, Platform, Greenpeace and FairPensions are putting to scrutiny offshore Arctic exploration as a key direction in the company’s strategy. The new report ‘Out in the Cold…
Royal Dutch Shell’s plans for Arctic exploration are exposing investors to a ‘spectrum of risks’, this new report by Platform, Fairpensions, and Greenpeace warns. Download the report (pdf) and investor briefing or read online below. The report highlights Shell’s failure to address key concerns for investors and environmentalists: • Spill response plans are inadequate –…
This article first appeared as an introduction to a report, Risking Ruin: Shell’s dangerous developments in the Tar Sands, Arctic and Nigeria, published on 18 May 2012 by Indigenous Environmental Network and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. As economic austerity bites, major oil companies are making staggering profits. A high oil price in 2011 made Shell $30.92 billion in annual…