A Guest Blog by John de Falbe of Sandoe’s Books. I just received an early copy of “The Oil Road: A Journey from the Caspian Sea to the City of London” by Platform’s James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello, published by Verso, due out in mid-September. I read it in manuscript: it’s a brilliant analysis of…
The new Paperback edition has a brand new Afterword… “★★★★★…The Oil Road opens the lid on the often-shady energy economy, weaving absorbing travel reportage into powerful investigative journalism…. If you want to know why oil matters, read this book.” – Time Out (book of the week) “An elegantly written travel book…will make you think the next…
To mark Sunday’s performance of “The Ballad of Those tho Drink the Sun” celebrating the life and work of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, Platform is publishing a book excerpt on Nazim Hikmet, poetry & technology, the Euphrates versus BP’s Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. This is an edited excerpt from our upcoming book “The Oil Road: A Journey…
There are two Platform events coming up which explore themes in our forthcoming book The Oil Road by Mika Minio and James Marriott, due out in September. The first event is a talk in the Bristol Festival of Ideas – What if we left the oil in the ground? Taking place at Arnolfini on Sunday 20th…
This article was first published in Platform’s Carbon Web newsletter, issue 10. At 11pm on 5 August, a major explosion ruptured the BTC pipeline near Yurtbashi village in Turkey’s eastern Erzincan province. The blast sent flames shooting up to 160 feet in the air. Nearby residents told PLATFORM that they heard explosions, before a plume…
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…
Safety failures delay the opening of BP’s BTC pipeline by a year – This report was first published in Platform’s carbon web newsletter, issue 3. BP’s reputation faces a battering as completion of its flagship Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) has been delayed by more than a year. The pipeline will not come on stream before April, due to…
This interview was first published in Platform’s carbon web newsletter, issue 2. There are few independent and publicly critical voices emanating from Azerbaijan. With the current regime of President Ilham Aliyev – like that of his father Heydar before him – enforcing its hegemonic control through both brute force and a strong hold over…
Presentation at `Desire Lines` conference on Arts & Ecology, Dartington College, Totnes, Devon. Saturday 10th September 2005. James Marriott. THE END OF THE EMPIRE OF GOG & MAGOG (Slide showing on screen at start : Robin Territories at Dartington 1935 – 1945) First of may I say thank you to Alan (Bolden), Lara (Riley) and…
This report was first published in Platform’s carbon web newsletter, Issue 1. BP’s official inauguration of its BakuTbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in May contained in a nutshell the controversy of the last ten years – and a glimpse of what can be expected over the next forty. As BP’s PR machine was telling positive stories…


