Tullow sues Heritage – Uganda pays the price; court papers published for $300m oil trial
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Nov 28, 2011
Guestblog by Taimour Lay, Former Platform researcher, Uganda and DRC. Download the full court papers (30 megabytes) A court case in London between Tullow and Heritage will reveal much of what went wrong in the battle over Uganda’s oil. It is a long way from the shores of Lake Albert to the new commercial court...
Uganda demands end to oil clause that freezes weak regulation
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Sep 29, 2011
The Ugandan government is insisting that British oil company Tullow Oil, France’s Total and Chinese group CNOOC drop the stabilisation clause from their oil contract of Lake Albert before approving the $10 billion oil project. The original contracts were leaked by PLATFORM in 2010. Meanwhile Ugandan opposition MPs are unhappy that Museveni’s government allowed disputes...
Oil activist in DRC slams repression & Perenco secrecy during interview
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Dec 23, 2010
Pastor Jacques Bakulu has been campaigning against oil companies operating in western Congo for over 20 years. The secretive Anglo-French company Perenco took over Chevron’s concession in 2004 and claims to be producing 25,000 barrels a day. None of its four contracts are publicly available. In February this year Perenco were once again accused of pouring...
Cleaning up Museveni’s oil mess in Uganda
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May 18, 2010
Taimour Lay envisions the potential for a new government in 2011 to renegotiate and restructure Uganda’s oil contracts with Tullow, Total and CNOOC: “Faced with the mess Museveni has bequeathed, the new president will find that the most important thing he ever does in power is to mobilise support for renegotiation of the oil agreements....
BG fined while villagers resist in Kazakhstan
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Feb 28, 2010
The Western consortium developing the enormous Karachaganak natural gas field in Kazakhstan was fined $21 million yesterday for excessive dumping waste. British BG, Italian Eni and American Chevron, the companies developing the field on the the border with Russia, were convicted of environmental violations in 2008 by a regional court. Analysts and reporters believe that the penalty...
PLATFORM leaks Uganda’s oil contracts – not such a rosy deal after all
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Nov 22, 2009
Held secret by the Ugandan government and oil companies Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil, PLATFORM today is revealing the terms of the contracts for oil operations by Lake Albert on the Uganda-Congo border, and their economic implications. For the first time, one of Uganda’s Production Sharing Agreements is available to the public to read, after...
Iraq: New contracts will undermine Iraqi independence
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Nov 12, 2009
The mega-oil deals signed and pledged in Iraq in last week have been major news, marking another step by the oil majors back into a country that liberated itself from the “robbery and exhaustion practiced by the monopolistic oil companies” in 1972. But the full consequences of the agreements have been hard to untangle. BP and Chinese...
“Worst kept secret? Tullow Oil’s contract” in Uganda
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Oct 11, 2009
Great article by Taimour Lay in Uganda’s Independent: The full release of Uganda’s Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil & Gas is the fundamental first step towards forging a democratic and socially responsible extraction of oil in the Albertine rift. Instead, Ugandans are being subjected to a disinformation campaign coordinated by...
Biden eats Iraqi pie with American fork
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Sep 25, 2009
Obama’s administration is continuing Bush’ policy of demanding that the Iraqi government hand over highly profitable oil contracts to Western oil companies. According to UPI, during a visit to Baghdad this month, Vice-Pres Biden was “hustling on behalf of the U.S. oil giants who have long dreamed of getting their hands on what may be the...
BP keeps digging deeper under Caspian
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Aug 12, 2009
The main workhorse of Azeri oil production – the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field – will peak in 2010, due to BP and consortium members driving an aggressively fast extraction programme. As the revenues poured in over the last eight years, the state budget soared, covering military expansion, President Aliev’s opulent lifestyle and doubtful infrastructure projects including a...
