The Canadian government, ruled by conservatives, has been very active dismissing any claims made by NGOs and other governments over the environmental damage which will result from tar sands extraction. In fact, the government wants us to believe that they will be able to turn one of the most polluting activities in the world into [...]
Archive for the ‘oil’ Category
Canadian government blasted by its own environmental agency over tar sands
Posted in oil on August 13, 2011 | 4 Comments »
The enormous cost of Shell’s crimes in Nigeria
Posted in oil on August 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
For five decades, Shell has polluted the Ogoniland, in Nigeria, with oil. Dozens of massive oil spills have left the soil and water contaminated and the revolt by the Ogoni against these crimes was often crushed by the dictatorship, with a precious help from Shell. A new report by the United Nations Environment Program estimates [...]
BP resumes deepwater drilling in Gulf of Mexico
Posted in oil on April 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
One year after BP caused the biggest environmental disaster in US history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it managed to get the permission from the US government to continue drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (Yahoo News). The company’s chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg reassured the public by saying on a conference on oil spill risk [...]
Chevron found guilty of polluting the Amazon
Posted in oil on February 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
After eighteen years of hard struggle, the people of Ecuador who suffer the impacts of oil extraction pollution had a major legal victory. Today, Chevron was found guilty of polluting the Amazon and was sentenced to pay $8 billion to clean up the mess (Rainforest Action Network), concretely 68 billion litres of oil spilled. Looks [...]
Repsol spills oil in the Ebro Delta
Posted in oil on December 31, 2010 | 4 Comments »
One can hardly find any news about this outside the Spanish media. In December 22, a major oil spill in a platform in the Ebro Delta, Tarragona, Spain, resulted in a 23 km2 oil slick (Tipically Spanish). Strong winds then dispersed the oil, resulting in the contamination of the Baleares islands (Ecologistas en Acción). Despite [...]
Wikileaks shows that a BP platform blow-out was covered
Posted in oil on December 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
From the leaked US embassy cables came another revelation: 18 months before the Deep Water Horizon spill, BP suffered a similar accident on a gas platform in Azerbaijan. Luckily for the workers, BP managed to evacuate everyone (Guardian). The cables also show that, as usual, BP tried to cover up its mess. But, in this [...]
Canadian diplomats to US oil companies: make sure that the oil continues a-flowing
Posted in oil on November 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The Pembina Institute, an environmental research group, managed to obtain through access-to-information legislation a series of correspondence from Canada’s Washington Embassy. Among the letters there was a memo in which the embassy exhorted BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other oil companies to aid the Canadian government in the task of making sure no environmental legislation [...]
Chevron thinks we’re stupid
Posted in oil on November 2, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The oil company Chevron is greenwashing its image using a bold advertising technique: aknowledging its errors and pretending it cares. In the “We agree” campaign (link), Chevron shows a bunch of posters with demands from “common citizens” and adds “we agree”. Of course, the oil company won’t do nothing but it hopes that, by promising [...]
Tony Hayward flies off but BP remains the same
Posted in oil on July 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In Portugal, we have a saying that describes changing leaders to pretend that something has changed in politics: “The shit is the same, only the flies change”. It is easy to see how this applies to BP. In July 15, BP finally managed to plug the leak (if everything goes as planned, that is). For [...]
A ticking time bomb in the Gulf of Mexico
Posted in oil on July 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells spread across the Gulf of Mexico, and neither industry nor US government is checking for potential oil spills, an Associated Press investigation reveals (link). In particular, 3,500 wells are “temporarily abandoned” and, while regulations demand oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells [...]
