Terrible timing: BP announce drilling plans during Libyan “Day of Rage”
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Feb 21, 2011
In the morning of Thursday 17 February, Libyan protestors responding to a callout for a Day of Rage began to fill the streets in Benghazi and other major cities. Over a hundred demonstrators had already been shot and wounded in previous days, but now the people broke through the barrier of fear. A crackdown ensued, with police...
Oil spills & military collusion continue in Niger Delta as Exxon’s offshore fields go down
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Jun 26, 2010
With the media searching for new angles on BP’s Gulf disaster, stories on the devastation in Nigeria and the “normality” of spills in the Delta are now finally making it back into the papers – see Benoit Faucon’s piece in the Wall Street Journal and Adam Nossiter’s NYT article. It’s about time, as several Exxon spills in quick...
Oil companies & RBS profited off state terror in Sudan
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Jun 14, 2010
A Chatham House event last Thursday launched the new report “Unpaid Debt: The Legacy of Lundin, Petronas and OMV in Sudan, 1997-2003,” on the role of oil companies in fuelling war and atrocities in Sudan. A group of aid agencies that worked in Sudan during the civil war, the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS), have called for an...
Colombian army attacks striking BP workers
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Jun 10, 2010
Claire Hall from Espacio Bristol-Colombia describes how the Colombian army has joined in the repression of striking BP workers in Casanare. from Upside Down World: “A five month long mobilisation against BP in the Casanare region of Colombia has escalated after the Colombian army entered the BP installations with force this week and confronted workers who have been peacefully...
Stop harassment of Iraqi oil workers
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Apr 21, 2010
After weeks of industrial action in the southern oil fields in Iraq, management are trying to prevent the Refinery Workers Union from operating by sending four of its leaders to other workplaces. This is a standard management tactic in Iraq, and in the past has often meant sending union leaders to more hostile, violent areas of...
Colombian police repression of BP workers
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Feb 20, 2010
On 15 February the notorious ESMAD ‘anti-strike’ police attacked a community and workers’ picket line by the Tauramena BP plant in Casanare, Colombia. Three workers were hospitalised and several children affected heavily by tear gas. Workers at the BP plant at Tauramena, part of the Cusiana oil field in Casanare, Colombia have been protesting...
Turkmen environmentalist jailed as EU builds relationship with regime
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Nov 2, 2009
Andrey Zatoka, environmentalist and civil society leader from Turkmenistan, was sentenced to five years in prison after being framed for assault in Dashovuz, Turkmenistan, on October 29, 2009. On October 20, 2009, Andrey Zatoka was arrested by the police in a Dashovuz bazaar, after he was attacked by an unknown man while buying groceries for...
