By Zarina de Ruiter: Published on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 09:34 Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A), Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) have announced the successful demonstration of the industry’s ability to respond to a deepwater well control incident in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. John Hollowell, [...]
By John Ryan Shell Oil is scaling back its plans for drilling in the Arctic Ocean this year. Icy conditions in the far North and construction problems in Bellingham have delayed the company’s efforts. KUOW’s John Ryan reports from Seattle. Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser announced on Thursday that Shell only expects to drill [...]
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE 29 July 2012 In 2011, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to a meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council elevated the Arctic in American diplomacy. It also underscored the region’s geostrategic significance and the role that the U.S. wants to play amongst the other Arctic nations, each [...]
A version of this editorial appeared in print on July 30, 2012, on page A18 of the New York edition Last month, the State Department formally invited public comment on the issues it should consider in a new environmental assessment of the Keystone XL, a 1,200-mile pipeline that would connect the Alberta oil sands to [...]
COMMENT FROM A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR John, I would like to point out that while at high tide the Shell/Noble Discoverer drill ship that slipped it anchor may indeed not have run aground per se,(or grounded in a very muddy bottom preventing any damage) the photos show that at low tide the ship may have indeed [...]
Royal Dutch Shell said it was eyeing opportunities to expand in a new “more open” Russia, as it unveiled a 25pc slump in profits, hit by lower energy prices. By Emily Gosden, Energy reporter 7:00PM BST 26 Jul 2012 Royal Dutch Shell is eyeing opportunities to expand in a new “more open” Russia, its chief [...]
If you believe the press reports, you’d think that the oil industry was hurting of late, what with the headlines coming out of the most recent quarterly earnings reports saying things like, “Exxon and Shell Earnings Disappoint,” and “Occidental quarterly profit lower”, and “Chevron 2nd-Quarter Profit Off 6.8%; Upstream Earnings Fall”. These headlines paint a...Continue reading 'Oil companies continue to profit at the expense of our future'.
Just as the oil and gas industry buys influence on Capitol Hill and in state capitals across the country, so too can it buy friends at major universities who support its agenda. A recent Bloomberg article highlights just how close, and influential, these ties can actually be. The article details how the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a consortium...Continue reading 'Dirty Energy Money Seeps into Academia'.
Today marks the two-year anniversary of a massive oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in Marshall, Michigan…a spill whose effects are still being felt in many ways today. By the time the spill was stopped in the late summer of 2010, some 1.2 million gallons of corrosive tar sands oil had been released into the...Continue reading 'A solemn anniversary, scary new report, and hope around the corner in the fight against big oil'.
HT: BBC News and The Guardian The news coming out of Syria is plenty this morning as Hisham Ikhtiar, al-Assad’s security chief, succumbed to the wounds he received from Wednesday’s attack at the national security bureau, while fighting continued through-out the country, particularly in the Damascus suburb of Midan and a state funeral was held for the other [...]
Finally after fifty years of the Nigerian government playing softly, softly with Shell, is the country about to start playing hard-ball with the oil giant? The country’s oil regulator has asked Shell to pay a whopping $5 billion fine for a spill off the country’s southern coast last December. Late last year there was a...Continue reading 'Nigeria: Shell to Pay $5 Billion Fine?'.
Breaking News: In the UK right now, Greenpeace activists are shutting down Shell gas stations, in order to tell the company to stop drilling in the Arctic. As we stand 40 stations are currently shut down across the two main target cities: London and Edinburgh. In both capitals, Greenpeace plans to shut down every Shell...Continue reading 'Greenpeace Shuts Shell Gas Stations'.
Slowly but surely the evidence is growing against fracking, as the authorities struggle to protect public health and drinking water. A report published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Duke University professors found that there could be natural paths in the rock that connects the frack zone with drinking water....Continue reading 'Fracking Can Pollute, Confirms Study'.
Sometimes the best things in life are so simple. What better way to protest against the sponsorship of the arts by Big Oil than to undertake your own protest art installation? And what is more fitting than a real wind turbine – a symbol of renewable energy – for the huge modern turbine hall of...Continue reading 'A Wind Turbine for the Turbine Hall'.
The energy revolution sweeping the United States is now taking up serious column inches in the nation’s papers. Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran with with the headline: “Expanded Oil Drilling Helps U.S. Wean Itself From Mideast.” The next day it was “U.S. Wakes Up to North American Oil Abundance.” There is no doubt...Continue reading 'How Fracking Boosts the Tar Sands'.