Who Owns the Wind? – the promise of a publicly owned renewable energy system
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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...
‘Oil is the poison: Action is the antidote’ – sixteen days in the movement to end fossil fuels
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Apr 22, 2022
At 8.25 on Friday 15th April, as the rush hour traffic poured off the M4 at Chiswick, four activists stepped out in front of an Eddie Stobart oil tanker. Two held up a banner declaring ‘Just Stop Oil’ whilst two others disabled the braking system and clambered up onto the back of the tanker. Passing...
Tectonic shifts – the energy crisis and the leap beyond – The Economic War, part 4
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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...
Hail to the dockworkers! A Tale of Three Tankers – The Economic War, part 2
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Mar 10, 2022
You can track them still on MarineTraffic.com … the MV Seacod, the MV Boris Vilkitsky and the MV Pearl. Three ghost ships of the energy system, the spirits of the Economic War. All three of these vessels broke out of the fog that normally swathes the constant trade in oil and gas. All three neared...
Fuel poverty and Shell profits – who possesses the gas system?
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Feb 10, 2022
Standing in the front benches of the Opposition in the House of Commons, Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared “Citizens Advice have said they have seen a record number of people in January … Only today Shell announced that their profits had quadrupled to 20 billion dollars. They described the results as momentous,...
Just Transition in Glasgow – now is the time for ‘For’ and ‘Against’
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Nov 19, 2021
“We need a massive programme of retrofitting homes”. Francis Stuart of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) is outlining his understanding of the social project that needs to take place, the transformation of pretty much the entirety of the housing stock of Scotland – and indeed the UK. Stuart sits behind a long table...
How to Capture the Future and Store Capital – the plans for CCS in Liverpool Bay
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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...
Profiting from the Panic – how to use a squeeze in the oil flow to financial advantage
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Oct 4, 2021
Petrol Panic grips the nation. A second week of fuel shortages on the forecourts threatens to hobble the economy, or at least erode support for the Tories in their heartlands and overshadow the Conservative Party Conference. Will queues at the petrol pumps in Manchester crowd the prime minister’s show? The Shell stations in Bolton were...
Training costs: a barrier to transition for offshore workers
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Jun 22, 2021
In September 2020, Platform released a report, OFFSHORE: Oil and gas workers’ views on industry conditions and the energy transition, in collaboration with Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace UK. The report was the culmination of the first large-scale survey of offshore oil and gas workers in the UK, surveying 1,383 workers (approximately 5%...
Petition for a Just Transition in the North Sea
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Jun 4, 2021
Platform’s Just Transition campaign seeks a well-managed phase out of oil and gas production in the North Sea. This includes preventing future oil and gas licensing rounds, halting fossil fuel subsidies, and most importantly, ensuring that Just Transition measures are implemented during the phase out (i.e. large-scale job creation, re-training and re-skilling, safeguarding worker rights...
Crises, North Sea Oil and Covid-19
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Jun 17, 2020
Last month I spoke on behalf of Platform at an online event on the theme of ‘People Over Profit and Covid-19’ organised by our collaborators Kate and Ryan at Friends of the Earth Scotland. It was a really engaging event with two other speakers followed by breakout groups and a wider discussion afterwards. I looked...
Phasing out North Sea oil – what does it mean for jobs in Scotland?
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Sep 17, 2019
This blog is a version of our presentation of the report Sea Change: Climate Emergency, Jobs, and Managing the Phase-Out of UK Oil and Gas Extraction, at its launch event in Edinburgh on 11 September 2019. An abridged version has appeared in the Herald on Sunday. We know that tackling the climate emergency means...
