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Pirates! Oil companies are stoking hysteria to line their pockets
This article first appeared in New Internationalist This week the Combating Piracy Conference has been taking place in London, behind closed doors. This industry-organized event brings together representatives from European Union, NATO and oil and shipping companies. At a time when austerity is cutting into the public purse, and the armed forces, oil and shipping…
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The price of gas: imports, repression and fuel poverty
In a deplorable attack on the right to protest energy giant EDF is attempting to sue 21 activists for £5mn in a civil action. The No Dash for Gas campaigners occupied West Burton gas power station for 7 days by scaling two of the three 91m high cooling towers, brave people. They are going to…
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Want to understand the routes of corporate power? Read ‘The corporation that changed the world’
Whether it’s Google, Amazon, Starbucks using legal loopholes to avoid corporation tax; Apple’s subcontractors’ deathly abuse of workers in China; the ongoing call for justice from Bhopal over Union Carbide; Shell, BP’s activities in numerous vulnerable oil-affected communities; the bailout of RBS and Lloyds/TSB as ‘too big to fail’; or G4S taking over running sections of…
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A secret military subsidy – pirates and oil corps
New Internationalist featured a blog from Platform on our new briefing A Secret Subsidy: Oil companies, the Navy and the response to piracy. Here’s what we wrote: This week the Combating Piracy Conference has been taking place in London, behind closed doors. This industry-organised event brings together representatives from European Union, NATO and oil and…
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A Secret Subsidy – Oil companies, the Navy and the response to Piracy
British oil companies are promoting a ‘fight against piracy’ to get a vast hidden military subsidy. In the process they have got an unprecedented amount of influence over UK military policies. Oil companies have talked up the risk from piracy to justify the use of Navy frigates, drones and helicopters to protect corporate oil assets…
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17 Oct 2012 adminThe Oil Road on BBC Newshour
Mika Minio-Paluello discusses “The Oil Road – A Journey from the Caspian Sea to the City of London” on BBC Newshour from the BBC studio in Cairo. The conversation explores how BP is disrupting lives along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and how predator elites in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey collude with the corporations to maximise profits.…
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BP’s Caucasus gas pipeline blows up, as conflict escalates along route
A blast on the Turkish section of BP’s South Caucasus Gas Pipeline has shut down fuel exports, putting a stop to gas exports from Azerbaijan to Turkey. The explosion took place in a forest between the villages of Yagbasan and Catag, in remote north-eastern Turkey, near the borders with Georgia & Armenia. The Turkish Ministry…
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“An unexpectedly engaging tale” – The Oil Road reviewed in the FT
This weekend the Financial Times featured a great essay by Ed Crooks on some accounts of the oil industry. We were thrilled that Crooks led with Fuel on the Fire and Platform’s new book The Oil Road, as well as Jeff Rubin’s The Big Flatline. Fuel on the Fire, published in 2011, reveals the oil…
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29 Aug 2012 adminStrong Laws Needed To Curb Corporate Abuse
This is a guest post by Katie Redford, Director of EarthRights International. For many in the international human rights community, the new data about Shell’s security spending in Nigeria – including outlays of over $380,000,000 for just the period from 2007 to 2009 – released last week by Platform, is not surprising. The multinational oil giant has had…
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Oil companies gave cash and contracts to militants and warlords in Nigeria
Shell and Chevron have funded armed militant groups in the volatile Niger Delta region of Nigeria since at least 2003, according to oil-industry sources and US embassy cables. Both oil companies have also paid ‘protection’ money to other hostile groups for decades. Platform’s new briefing, as reported in the Daily Mail, is called Fuelling the Violence: Oil…
