 |
| US: Big Test Looms for Prosecutors at Enron Trial
by Kurt Eichenwald, The New York Times
January 26th, 2006
"For the government, if they lose the Enron case, it will be seen as a symbolic failure of their rather significant campaign against white-collar crime," said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School. "It will be seen as some evidence that some cases are too complicated to be brought into the criminal justice process."
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| US: As Profit Soars, Companies Pay US Less for Gas Rights
by Edmund L. Andrews, The New York Times
January 23rd, 2006
At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60 billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters. |
| BOLIVIA: Bolivia’s Morales rejects US domination
by Hal Weitzman, The Financial Times
January 22nd, 2006
Evo Morales was sworn in on Sunday as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in a historic and emotional ceremony that set the tone for his new government, promising to move much the profits of Bolivia's natural resources to the people of Bolivia. |
| US: Taking Enron to Task
by Carrie Johnson, Washington Post
January 18th, 2006
Sean M. Berkowitz and a small group of government lawyers will be in the spotlight in the Jan. 30 trial of Enron's former leaders. The case is the capstone in the cleanup after an era of business misconduct that left investors billions of dollars poorer. The outcome could shape the public's -- and history's -- judgment of how effective it was. |
| US: Class-action case sought over Katrina oil spill
by Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters
January 13th, 2006
Attorneys argued in federal court on Thursday over whether homeowners whose property fell victim to an oil spill from Hurricane Katrina can band together and sue Murphy Oil Corp in a class-action lawsuit. |
| US: Prosecutors Shift Focus on Enron
by Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times
January 11th, 2006
Government lawyers who will try the case against Enron's former chief executives, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, have signaled that they intend to spend less time befuddling jurors with talk of Enron's accounting. |
| US: Moving Mountains
by Erik Reece, Orion Magazine
January 9th, 2006
It is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy—through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. |
| US: Call It the Deal of a Lifetime
by Landon Thomas, Jr., The New York Times
January 8th, 2006
It has been a wrenching professional and personal reversal for Michael Kopper, who three years ago became the first Enron executive to plead guilty to criminal charges and cut a deal with the government. Mr. Kopper was also the first high-ranking Enron employee to publicly admit to lying and stealing - in his case, more than $16 million - from the company.
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| US: U.S. says Skilling mislead the SEC
CNN
January 4th, 2006
Prosecutors intend to argue that former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling attempted to deceive the Securities and Exchange Commission in a deposition he gave soon after the company's bankruptcy about his reason for selling 500,000 shares of Enron stock, according to a motion filed in a Houston federal court Tuesday. |
| NIGERIA: Blood Flows With Oil in Poor Villages
by Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
January 1st, 2006
For months a pitched battle has been fought between communities that claim authority over this village and the right to control what lies beneath its watery ground: a potentially vast field of crude oil that has caught the attention of a major energy company. |
| RUSSIA: In Russia, Pollution Is Good for Business
by Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times
December 28th, 2005
One of the paradoxes of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is that companies in Russia and other Eastern European countries, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, are poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through trading their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air.
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| US: Former Top Enron Accountant Pleads Guilty to Fraud
by Simon Romero and Vikas Bajas, The New York Times
December 28th, 2005
The former chief accounting officer of Enron pleaded guilty today to a single felony charge of securities fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, giving a significant lift to the government's case against the two leading figures in the scandal over Enron's collapse.
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| ARGENTINA: The War for Gold in Catamarca
by Darío Aranda, Página 12 Newspaper
December 18th, 2005
Water that is undrinkable. Air that is better left unbreathed. A community impoverished, living above mountains of gold. These are some of the contradictions of Andalgalá, a town of 17,000 inhabitants in Catamarca, Argentina, 240 kilometres from the provincial capital, home for ten years now to the largest gold and copper mine in the country, and one of the largest in the world. |
| AZERBAIJAN: From Boom to Bust and Back
by Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal
November 29th, 2005
Azerbaijan prepares for another round of oil wealth and risk as a consortium led by BP gets ready to pump one million barrels a day from a big offshore field to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. |
| US: Testimony by Oil Executives Is Challenged
by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times
November 17th, 2005
Senators from both parties demanded Wednesday that several oil executives explain statements they made to Congress last week about their ties to the energy task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney. |
| IRAQ: OPEC and the Economic Conquest of Iraq
by Greg Palast, Harper's/gregpalast.com
October 24th, 2005
According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein.
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| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians say Texaco left damage
by Gonzalo Solano, Associated Press
October 20th, 2005
About 50 Cofan Indians, some holding handkerchiefs over their faces to fend off an acrid chemical stench, gathered around two contaminated open pits they say were left behind and never adequately cleaned up by the former Texaco Corp. |
| US: EPA probes alleged mud dumping in Alaska
by Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press
October 18th, 2005
Federal regulators are investigating the alleged dumping of thousands of gallons of tainted mud by a Texas drilling company into the Beaufort Sea on Alaska's northern coast, a spokeswoman for Alaska's environmental protection agency said Tuesday. |
| US: Is It Too Late to Ride the Energy Bandwagon?
by Tim Gray, The New York Times
October 9th, 2005
Natural resources funds invest in everything from gold miners to timber companies. But oil-related stocks, ranging from drillers like the Apache Corporation to services providers like Halliburton, tend to predominate. Interest in the sector stems from its recent double-digit returns as well as worldwide developments - including the Iraq war, China's torrid growth and Hurricane Katrina - that have pushed oil prices higher and higher.
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| RUSSIA: Prosecutors raid Yukos-affiliated cos.
The Associated Press
October 5th, 2005
Investigators raided a number of companies connected to the shattered Yukos oil empire, prosecutors said Wednesday, as part of a $7 billion money-laundering probe. |
| EUROPE: Europe's 'dirty 30' named
News 24
October 4th, 2005
Coal-fired power stations in Greece, Germany and Spain top a new table of Europe's dirtiest electricity plants, the environmental group WWF International said on Tuesday. |
| US: A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska
by Felicity Barringer, The New York Times
October 2nd, 2005
The 217,000 acres of windblown water and mottled tundra here on the North Slope of Alaska, separating Teshekpuk Lake from the Beaufort Sea, are home in summer to 50,000 to 90,000 migratory birds. This corner of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve is also thought to be brimming with oil. |
| KAZAKHSTAN: Mobil, CIA secrets may come out
Bloomberg
August 25th, 2005
In the mid-1990s, long before oil prices topped $60 a barrel, U.S. companies sought access to Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation that the U.S. State Department says will be among the world's top 10 producers of crude by 2015. |
| US: Mobil, CIA Secrets May Come Out un Bribery Trial of Oil Adviser
by David Glovin, Bloomberg
August 24th, 2005
Federal prosecutors say Giffen, a New York investment banker who became an official in Kazakhstan's government, cemented his power by bribing Kazakh leaders with $84 million that Amoco Corp., Mobil Oil Co., Phillips Petroleum Co. and Texaco Inc. paid to win access to Kazakh fields. In January, Giffen goes on trial in federal district court in New York in one of the largest overseas criminal bribery cases ever. |
| RUSSIA: Shell gas project hit by eight-month delay
by Thomas Catan, Financial Times
July 14th, 2005
Royal Dutch/Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant, said on Thursday its flagship Russian gas project would be delayed by at least eight months and cost $20bn (£11.4bn) twice the original estimate. |
| US: The Big Tug of War Over Unocal
by Steve Lohr, New York Times
July 6th, 2005
As the lobbying heats up in Washington over Unocal, a midsize American oil company, the battle lines in the takeover contest are now drawn clearly, if oddly, by its suitors. |
| Belgium: Belgian court stops human rights probe of Total oil
by Reuters, Reuters
July 1st, 2005
A Belgian court has stopped an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the French oil giant Total in military-ruled Myanmar, dashing the hopes of four refugees who brought the case.
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| US: The True Price of Oil
by Ashley Shelby, AlterNet
June 24th, 2005
Sixteen years after the Exxon Valdez spill, the Alaskans most affected by the spill haven't seen one cent of a $5 billion settlement. |
| COLOMBIA: Terrified Farmers Sue BP
by Robert Verkaik, The Independent Online
June 21st, 2005
BP is facing a £15m compensation claim from a group of Colombian farmers who say that the British oil company took advantage of a regime of terror by government paramilitaries to profit from the construction of a 450-mile pipeline. |
| US: Electricity from Cow Waste
ENN
June 17th, 2005
Environmental Power Corporation , in collaboration with Dairyland Power Cooperative, is formally commissioning the first of its electricity generating anaerobic digester systems. |
| BRAZIL: Homegrown Fuel Supply Helps Drivers Breathe Easy
by Marla Dickerson , L.A. Times
June 15th, 2005
Today about 40% of all the fuel that Brazilians pump into their vehicles is ethanol, known here as alcohol, compared with about 3% in the United States. No other nation is using ethanol on such a vast scale. The change wasn't easy or cheap. But 30 years later, Brazil is reaping the return on its investment in energy security while the U.S. writes checks for $50-a-barrel foreign oil. |
| US: A Shift to Green
by Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times
June 12th, 2005
Bucking the Bush administration's position that tougher rules would harm the U.S. economy, Fortune 500 companies including General Electric Co., Duke Energy Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in recent months have championed stronger government measures to reduce industrial releases of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas that scientists have linked to rising temperatures and sea levels. |
| WORLD: Shell Predicts Two Decades of Rising Energy Prices
by Michael Harrison, The Independent
June 6th, 2005
Worldwide energy prices are set to rise over the next two decades as individual countries become more concerned about ensuring security of supply and governments take a more pro-active role in dictating energy policy and regulating markets, according to the latest global outlook from the oil giant Shell. |
| EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Stripped of Its Wealth
by David Leigh, Guardian
June 2nd, 2005
This mini country located under the armpit of the West African coast has immense quantities of oil; it is currently exporting $4.5bn worth (about £2.5bn) a year. Yet such an astonishing bonanza appears to have done most of the country's citizens no good. The IMF reported bluntly in May: "Unfortunately, this wealth has not yet led to measurable improvements in living conditions." |
| US: BP Admits Workers Were Not Root Cause of Blast
by Anne Belli, Houston Chronicle
May 31st, 2005
Union officials have said they expressed concerns about the location of the trailer as well as BP's use of the vent stack as opposed to a flare system. Had a flare been in place, the excess liquid and vapors likely would have been burned off and the accident may have been prevented. |
| NIGERIA: Shell Extends Gas Flaring Deadline
by Sopuruchi Onwuka, Daily Champion
May 31st, 2005
A major hiccup on government's effort to terminate gas flaring by 2008 has occured as oil multinational, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) said the official deadline will no longer be realistic to the firm. |
| UK: Climate-Change Prompts Rebellion at Exxon
by Terry Macalister, The Guardian
May 24th, 2005
A major British institutional investor will tomorrow oppose the re-election ExxonMobil's chief executive on the grounds that the world's biggest stock-listed oil company talks down links between man-made CO2 emissions and climate change.
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| US: Coal Plants Could Be Much Cleaner
by Kenneth J. Stier, New York Times
May 23rd, 2005
Even with gas prices following oil prices into the stratosphere and power companies turning back to coal, most new plants - about nine out of 10 on the drawing board - will not use integrated gasification combined-cycle technology. |
| US: Clean-Energy Mega-Mall
by Amanda Griscom Little, Grist
May 20th, 2005
The developer of a new mall planned for Upstate New York vows that it will be the closest thing to an "Apollo Project" for renewable energy that America has ever seen -- one that grows the economy, strengthens national security by encouraging energy independence, and protects the environment. |
| MEXICO: Pemex Accidents Reveal Troubled Oil Monopoly
by James C. McKinley and Elisabeth Malkin, New York Times
May 15th, 2005
The recent spate of accidents highlights the complicated symbiotic relationship between the company and the government that is supposed to regulate it. Pemex provides the government with 40 percent of its income, and the environmental agency charged with policing the oil company is woefully underfinanced. |
| US: No New Refineries in 29 Years
by Jad Mouawad, New York Times
May 9th, 2005
Over the last quarter-century, the number of refineries in the United States dropped to 149, less than half the number in 1981. Because companies have upgraded and expanded their aging operations, refining capacity during that time period shrank only 10 percent from its peak of 18.6 million barrels a day. At the same time, gasoline consumption has risen by 45 percent. |
| AMAZON: Victims of 'Toxico'
by Andrew Gumbel, Independent
April 27th, 2005
Environmentalists estimate around 2.5 million acres of rainforest were compromised or destroyed in Texaco's search for oil in Ecuador. It is a disaster that has left the jungle ravaged and its people dying of cancer.
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| US: Harvard Divests from PetroChina
Associated Press
April 7th, 2005
Harvard University, after months of pressure from student activists, will sell an estimated $4.4 million (A€3.42 million) stake in PetroChina, whose parent company is closely tied to the Sudanese government, university officials said. |
| INDIA: In Dabhol Lawyers, Leopards Dare Tread
by Braden Reddall, Reuters
February 18th, 2005
The $2.9 billion plant that bankrupt U.S. energy giant Enron built was a technological breakthrough and still represents the largest single foreign investment in India. But since shutting down almost four years ago, it has proven more of an embarrassment than a showcase. |
| EU: Leading Kyoto 'Carbon Revolution'
by Stephen Mulvey, BBC news
February 15th, 2005
The first phase of post-Kyoto emissions trading (2005-2007) may see too many industry allowances for the scheme to drive a major clean-up of European industry. |
| CHINA: China had role in Yukos split-up
BBC
February 2nd, 2005
China lent Russia $6billion to help the Russian government renationalise the key Yuganskneftegas unit of oil group Yukos, it has been revealed. |
| UK: Oil Firms Fund Campaign to Deny Climate Change
by David Adam, Guardian (UK)
January 27th, 2005
Lobby groups funded by the US oil industry such as ExxonMobil are targeting Britain in a bid to play down the threat of climate change and derail action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, leading scientists have warned. |
| RUSSIA: State Steps in for Yukos Unit
by Catherine Belton, The Guardian
December 23rd, 2004
Russia's state owned oil firm Rosneft has bought the mystery winner of Yukos' prize production unit in a move that nationalises 11% of the country's oil output even as a legal battle rages in America over the sale. |
| MYANMAR: Unocal to Settle Rights Claims
by Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times
December 14th, 2004
The El Segundo firm agrees to pay to end a landmark case brought by
villagers claiming abuses by troops along a Myanmar pipeline.
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| CHINA: Jet Fuel Scandal Deals Nation a Body Blow
by Kosuke Takahashi, Asia Times Online
December 6th, 2004
China's jet fuel import monopoly, Singapore-listed China Aviation Oil (CAO), reported whopping losses to the tune of US$550 million, raising serious questions about the way Chinese firms are managed, their lack of transparency, accountability and fairness, as well as the efficiency of Singaporean financial authorities. |
| NIGERIA: Five convicted in Enron barge case
Agence France-Presse
November 4th, 2004
A JURY in Houston, Texas, today delivered criminal convictions against four bankers and an Enron executive in a case stemming from a money-losing project of electricity-generating barges off the coast of Nigeria.
The trial stems from an investigation of the energy trader's collapse three years ago. |
| NORWAY: Former Statoil executive to pay fine over Iran deal
Wall Street Journal
October 19th, 2004
The former head of international operations for Statoil ASA, Richard Hubbard, will follow his former employer's lead and pay a fine handed down by Norwegian police for his role in a business deal with an Iranian consulting company.
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| NIGERIA: Fuel Price Strike Suspended
by Staff Writers, afrol News
October 14th, 2004
Nigeria's trade union now gives the government two weeks to reduce fuel prices while temporarily calling off the nation-wide strike. Negotiations between trade union leaders and the federal government started today, after trade unions during four days have demonstrated their power to cause an almost complete stand-still throughout the country. |
| Iraq: Oil-Slick James Baker
by Greg Palast, AlterNet
April 28th, 2004
There's nothing in the Iraq Strategy about democracy or voting. But there's plenty of detail about creating a free-market Disneyland in Mesopotamia, with "all" state assets and that's just about everything in that nation to be sold off to corporate powers. The Bush team secret program ordered: "... asset sales, concessions, leases and management contracts, especially those in the oil and supporting industries." |
| WORLD: Shell Outsourcing
by Mark Tran, Guardian (London)
April 28th, 2004
Royal Dutch Shell, the embattled oil giant, said today it will cut up to 2,800 jobs as it relocates its global technology division. IT operations, now concentrated in the UK, the Netherlands and the US, are to be shifted to India or Malaysia, where Shell already employs about 1,000 people in a technology support centre. |
| IRAQ: US Unearths Iraqi Front Companies
BBC
April 16th, 2004
Eight firms and five people have been named by US and UK investigators as fronts used to finance the activities of the former Iraqi regime. |
| US: Nuclear Industry Powers Back Into Life
by David Teather, The Guardian
April 13th, 2004
Twenty-five years after the United States suffered its worst nuclear accident, the moribund atomic energy industry has begun to show signs of life. A consortium of seven of the biggest companies in the business, including a division of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), now says it intends to apply for the first licence to build a commercial nuclear plant in the US since the near disaster at Three Mile Island. |
| US: Domestic Oil Companies, Not OPEC, Mostly to Blame for High Gas Prices
Consumers Union
April 7th, 2004
Domestic Oil Companies' Consolidation, Restricting Supplies Biggest Cause of Soaring Gas Prices OPEC Actions Only Part of the Reason For Record Pump Prices In testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, two leading consumer groups placed much of the blame for higher gasoline prices on domestic oil companies. The groups noted that consolidation in the refining industry has enabled large oil companies to restrict the supplies that make it to the pump, sending gas prices higher and leading to windfall profits. |
| World: Lenders Urge World Bank to Reject Oil, Mining Pullout
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service News Agency
April 5th, 2004
International investment banks are lobbying the World Bank to rebuff the recommendations of an independent study that urged the global lender to bail out of gas, oil and mining projects. |
| Nigeria: Shell Revamp to Cost Jobs
BBC News
March 22nd, 2004
The oil company Royal Dutch Shell has said it plans to cut jobs in Nigeria, so it can invest more money in better production methods. The aim is to raise output by 500,000 barrels a day within two years, says the head of Shell's Nigeria operations, Chris Finlayson. |
| Saudi Arabia: Foreign Concerns Make Deals to Search for Gas
by Simon Romero, New York Times
March 7th, 2004
Saudi Arabian officials said on Sunday that they were seeking to strengthen ties with China and Russia after allowing energy companies from those countries to be among the first foreign businesses to explore Saudi natural gas reserves in more than three decades. |
| UK: Shell's Top Executive Is Forced to Step Down
by Heather Timmons, New York Times
March 4th, 2004
The top executive of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the world's third-largest oil company, was forced to resign on Wednesday after an internal investigation into the company's surprise disclosure in January that it had overstated its oil and natural gas reserves by 20 percent. |
| Libya: US Allows Oil Groups In
by Edward Alden and Salamander Davoudi, Financial Times
February 27th, 2004
The US on Thursday said it would let US oil companies reopen negotiations with the Libyan government over potentially lucrative oil leases that have been off- limits since Washington imposed sanctions on the government of Muammer Gadaffi in 1986. |
| US: FERC Claims Jurisdiction on Gas Plant
by Deborah Schoch, Los Angeles Times
February 27th, 2004
The federal position on a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Beach sets up a possible conflict with state regulators. |
| Kazakhstan: Oil Majors Agree to Develop Field
by Heather Timmons, The New York Times
February 26th, 2004
A consortium of international oil companies formally agreed on Wednesday to proceed with a $29 billion development of the Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan, the largest oil discovery since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska more than 30 years ago. |
| World: WB to Work on Oil, Gas and Mining Projects
Financial Times
February 26th, 2004
The president of the World Bank and his management colleagues will reject several of the crucial recommendations of a review about the extractive industries - oil, gas and mining - they themselves instituted. In particular, they will oppose the idea that the Bank should phase out all oil projects within five years. |
| Congressional Inquiry Necessary for War Profiteering
Campaign to Stop the War Profiteerers
February 25th, 2004
The Pentagon and State Department criminal fraud investigations of Halliburton concerning their handling of a fuel contract in Iraq are an important first step - but point to the need for bold action on the part of the President and Congress to ensure accountability of military contractors, according to the Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers. |
| Iraq: Pentagon Opens Criminal Inquiry of Halliburton
by Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times
February 24th, 2004
Pentagon officials said Monday night that they have opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton, the giant Texas oil-services concern, in an inquiry that will examine "potential overpricing" of fuel taken into Iraq by one of the company's subcontractors. |
| US: Ex-Enron Boss Charged with Fraud
by Mark Tran, Guardian (London)
February 19th, 2004
Jeff Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, has been charged with 42 counts of fraud, insider trading and giving false statements to auditors in a federal indictment released today. The indictment also includes new charges against former Enron chief accounting officer, Rick Causey, who pleaded not guilty to six fraud counts last month. |
| Chad: The Making Of An African Petrostate
by Somini Sengupta, New York Times
February 18th, 2004
Oil is bringing big changes to Chad, some cultural, like the one Mr. Elie worries about, others practical, like the way the World Bank will be overseeing how Chad manages its new wealth. Chad, among the poorest countries in the world, is now Africa's newest petrostate. |
| US: What Did the Vice-President Do for Halliburton?
by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
February 10th, 2004
Halliburton blamed the high costs on an obscure Kuwaiti firm, Altanmia Commercial Marketing, which it subcontracted to deliver the fuel. In Kuwait, the oil business is controlled by the state, and Halliburton has claimed that government officials there pressured it into hiring Altanmia, which had no experience in fuel transport. Yet a previously undisclosed letter, dated May 4, 2003, and sent from an American contracting officer to Kuwait's oil minister, plainly describes the decision to use Altanmia as Halliburton's own "recommendation." |
| Iraq: Occupation, Inc.
by Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena, Southern Exposure
February 4th, 2004
Bechtel's projects are examined by freelance journalists. Locals complain of shoddy work, problems with schools, sewage, electricity, gas lines, and low wages. |
| IRAQ: Life More Difficult Now?
by Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena, Southern Exposure
February 4th, 2004
Bechtel's projects are examined by freelance journalists. Locals complain of shoddy work, problems with schools, sewage, electricity, gas lines, and low wages. |
| Libya: Move May Pave Way for Return of US Oil Groups
by Kevin Morrison, Financial Times
December 29th, 2003
Libya's pledge to dismantle its programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could pave the way for the return of US oil companies that left the North African country in 1986 when then President Ronald Reagan imposed sanctions on the country. |
| Caucasus: World Bank, ABN Amro Back BTC Pipeline
by Oliver Balch, Guardian (London)
December 8th, 2003
Later this week, the Dutch bank is expected to lend its weight officially to the 1,760km Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which even in Mr Burrett's own words is "seen as highly controversial". Campaigners have taken issue with the idea to run a pipeline through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish coast ever since it was first mooted in the early 1990s. |
| Cuba: Havana's Black Gold
by Tom Fawthrop, BBC
November 13th, 2003
Cuba's fast-improving energy sector - with domestic oil production now at 4.1m tons a year and accounting for 80% of the country's energy needs - is expected to eventually ease the country's current economic woes. |
| Caspian Sea: Oil Pipeline Wins World Bank Loan
by Peter Behr, Washington Post
November 4th, 2003
A planned 1,100-mile pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Sea toward world markets won a $125 million loan commitment from a World Bank funding unit today. The International Finance Corp. approved the loan after the Azerbaijan government agreed to audited international reviews on how it spends $29 billion in future revenue from oil projects. |
| Caspian: Plan for World's Biggest Pipeline
by Philip Thornton and Charles Arthur, The Independent (London)
October 28th, 2003
The answer is the world's longest export pipeline, a 1,090-mile, 42-inch wide pipe snaking its way within a 500-metre corridor from the Caspian Sea port of Baku, in Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, in Turkey, via some of the world's most unstable and conflict-ridden nations. The project will cost up to $4 billion (2.4bn) and is being built by a consortium of 11 companies led by BP. Almost three quarters of the funding will come in the form of bank loans including some $600 million of taxpayers' money. |
| Bolivia: Unrest Over Natural Gas Project
by Mark Mulligan, Financial Times
October 1st, 2003
Trade unionists, indigenous groups and farmers have joined forces in recent weeks to protest against government economic policies and private sector plans to export the country's abundant natural gas supplies from a port in Chile, a historic enemy of the landlocked country. |
| Tanzania: Oil Companies to Drill Off East African Coast
by Giles Foden, Guardian
September 11th, 2003
The Dutch arm of Shell is in negotiations with the Tanzanian government for licences to prospect four deep-sea areas or "blocks" in the Rufiji delta and another four off Zanzibar. Petrobras of Brazil is bidding for a block about 15 miles (24km) off Mafia, while the French company Maurel & Prom hopes to drill on Mafia itself and areas of Mkuranga district on the coastal mainland. In time, the whole western flank of the Rift Valley inland may be drilled, as seismic and hydrocarbon tests have shown that this too has potential for oil. |
| World: Murky Business in Oil
by Miren Gutierrez, Inter Press Service
August 20th, 2003
A key factor is how a country makes its money. Oil hurts. Countries that make their money from oil have usually neglected to develop a middle class and solid political institutions. |
| Nigeria: Women Activists In Peaceful Takeover of Oil Site
by Dulue Mbachu, Associated Press
July 29th, 2003
WARRI, Nigeria -- village women are occupying a Shell Oil installation in a peaceful demonstration amid surging ethnic violence in Nigeria's restive oil delta. At least 20 people have been killed in the Niger Delta since mid-July in attacks allegedly linked to tribal competition for oil revenues. |
| Ecuador: Oil, Indigenous Peoples and the Environment
InterPress Service
June 20th, 2003
The Superior Justice Court of the northern city of Nueva Loja, on the Colombian border, accepted May 14 a lawsuit against the US transnational oil company Texaco. Representatives of 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos affected by oil exploration and extraction in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbos and Orellana have been working on the case for almost a decade. |
| USA: Interior Department Investigates Official's Role as Oil Lobbyist
by Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times
May 12th, 2003
Responding to a request from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut and a candidate for president, the inspector general of the Interior Department is investigating possible conflicts of interest involving a top Interior official who used to be a lobbyist for the oil, gas and mining interests he now regulates. |
| Venezuela: The Fight to Regain Position in Oil Market
by Humberto Marquez, Inter Press Service
April 7th, 2003
Venezuela's state oil monopoly, PDVSA, one of the biggest companies in the Southern Hemisphere, is facing the challenge of holding onto its status as one of the world's leading oil firms after a two-month lockout that crippled output and the dismissal of nearly half of the company's executives. |
| WORLD: Internal Review Criticizes World Bank Mining, Oil and Gas Projects
by By Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service
April 2nd, 2003
The World Bank should revamp its lending policies for mining, oil and gas projects to avoid corruption, mismanagement and poor economic performance spreading in countries that rely on such industries, says a confidential study by the Bank's internal review body. |
| Russia: Moscow Eyes Oil Markets in Asia
by Sergei Blagov, Inter Press Service
April 1st, 2003
MOSCOW, Apr. 1 (IPS) -- Moscow is planning to develop new markets in Asia for its crude oil and become an alternative to the volatile Middle East. In the blueprint are big pipeline projects to boost its oil exports to countries such as Japan -- the second biggest importer of oil in the world after the United States -- and China, the world's third largest oil consumer. |
| Iraq: US Army Depots Named After Oil Giants
by Neela Banerjee, New York Times
March 27th, 2003
The subtleties surrounding the sensitive role oil plays in the Iraqi war may have eluded the United States Army. Deep in some newspaper coverage yesterday was a report that the 101st Airborne Division had named one central Iraq outpost Forward Operating Base Shell and another Forward Operating Base Exxon. |
| LIBYA: Shell Signs $200m Deal
by Mark Tran, Guardian (London)
March 25th, 2003
Shell today marked its return to Libya after an absence of more than a decade by signing a $200m (110.6m) gas exploration deal with the former pariah state. The agreement - described by the oil giant as a landmark deal - was signed in Tripoli, coinciding with the groundbreaking visit to Libya by the prime minister, Tony Blair. |
| Nigeria: Oil Production Shut Down Due to Local Violence
by Toye Olori, Inter Press Service
March 22nd, 2003
Nigeria's petroleum industry may not benefit from the bombardment of Iraq by the United Stated-led coalition after ethnic clashes last week forced multi-national companies to shut down of operations in Warri, one of the major oil-producing cities in the Niger Delta region. |
| USA: Cheney is Still Paid by Pentagon Contractor
by Robert Bryce in Austin, Texas and Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian
March 12th, 2003
Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney. |
| USA: Firms Set for Postwar Contracts
by Danny Penman and agencies, The Guardian
March 11th, 2003
The American government is on the verge of awarding construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is deposed. |
| Canada: War May Be Hell But It's Profitable
by Rick Westhead, Toronto Star
March 10th, 2003
The invasion of Iraq hasn't even begun and already Rubar Sandi is drawing up post-war plans to repair decrepit oil wells, overhaul the financial services sector and revamp its economy. |
 | The New Oil Order
by Michael Renner, Foreign Policy in Focus
February 14th, 2003
We take a look at the geopolitics of oil and the role they play in Washington's war on Iraq. |
| USA: Corporations, War, You
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
February 6th, 2003
One thing is clear about the Bush administration's current rush to war: It has nothing to do with protecting U.S. security. |
| USA: The Kyoto Protocol and Iraq War
by Michael Renner, United Press International
February 5th, 2003
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- As discussion about the looming war in Iraq intensifies in the wake of George Bush's State of the Union address, one item conspicuously absent from news bulletins and pundits' pontifications is the Kyoto protocol. |
| VENEZUELA: Resumed Oil Production Marks Opposition's Defeat
EFE News Service
February 3rd, 2003
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez confirmed Sunday that petroleum production in the country had risen to 1.8 million barrels a day, which represents the "defeat" of the opposition's strike in this economic sector. |
| South Africa: Mandela Condemns US Stance on Iraq
BBC
January 30th, 2003
Former South African president Nelson Mandela has criticised US President George W Bush over Iraq, saying the sole reason for a possible US-led attack would be to gain control of Iraqi oil. |
| USA: US Begins Secret Talks to Secure Iraq's Oilfields
by Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow, Julian Borger in Washington, Terry Macalister and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian/UK
January 23rd, 2003
The US military has drawn up detailed plans to secure and protect Iraq's oilfields to prevent a repeat of 1991 when President Saddam set Kuwait's wells ablaze. |
| Russia: While Washington Waits, Chechnya Threatens to Explode
by William O. Beeman, Pacific News Service
January 8th, 2003
The Republic of Chechnya is poised to explode, and the reverberations are likely to send shock waves throughout the world. Washington has chosen to do nothing about this, to the detriment of the United States and the globe. |
| Russia: Oil Giants Try to Beat US to Iraqi Reserves
by Nick Paton Walsh, The Guardian
December 11th, 2002
Russian oil companies are trying to secure new contracts with Baghdad in an attempt to dominate Iraq's huge reserves and hold Washington to its promise of respecting Moscow's economic interests in the event of a regime change. |
| Canada: Parliament Backs Kyoto Ratification Plan
by David Ljunggren, Reuters
December 11th, 2002
OTTAWA -- The Canadian Parliament voted Tuesday to support government plans to ratify the Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gases, overriding opponents who say the treaty will hurt Canada's economy. |
| Kazakhstan: Oil Money Threatens to Make Killing Fields
by Paul Brown, The Guardian
December 4th, 2002
ATYRAU, KAZAKHSTAN December 4, 2002 -- The largest oil find for more than 20 years -- almost the size of the world's biggest, the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia -- is being developed in the Caspian Sea amid growing anger from the local people. |
| USA: Appeals Court Blocks California Offshore Oil Drilling
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
December 3rd, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO, California, December 3, 2002 (ENS) -- For a second time, the courts have ruled against federal plans to resume oil and natural gas drilling off the California coast. A three judge panel from a federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the government illegally extended 36 undeveloped oil leases off the central California coast, effectively blocking the renewal of the decades old leases. |
| EU: 'Rust Bucket' Tankers Blacklisted
by Gareth Harding, UPI
December 3rd, 2002
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The European Commission Tuesday published a list of tankers to be banned from EU waters after an aging vessel sunk off northwest Spain, dumping thousands of tons of oil into the Atlantic Ocean. |
| USA:Former El Paso VP Indicted on Bogus Trade Charges
Reuters
December 3rd, 2002
A former vice president and natural gas trader from El Paso Corp. will appear before a U.S. magistrate in Houston on Wednesday to face charges he reported bogus trades to an industry journal in 2001, the prosecutor said. |
| UK: BP Chief Fears US Will Carve up Iraqi Oil Riches
by Terry Macalister, The Guardian
October 30th, 2002
Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war. |
| World: Skepticism Hangs over Climate Change Meeting
by Ranjit Devraj, Inter Press Service
October 23rd, 2002
Another round of international talks on curbing global climate change began Wednesday in India, a country that sees the United States and the developed world as being part of the problem rather than the solution to global warming. |
| Burma: Oil Giant Denies Workers' Claim of Forced Labor
by Kalyani, OneWorld South Asia
October 22nd, 2002
French oil giant TotalFina-Elf flatly rejected accusations by a global trade union body Monday that its investments in Myanmar (formerly Burma) were directly linked to forced labor used for road-building and other heavy work around the Yadana oil pipeline off the country's southwest coast. |
| USA: Harken and Halliburton Back in the News
The Daily Enron
October 10th, 2002
First, the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe let loose on W. Bush. The papers disclosed that while a director and paid consultant for Harken Energy Bush had actively participated in the creation of off-the-books accounting gimmicks to hide company debt and raise the company's stock price. The deal, which the company did in conjunction with Harvard Management, created an off-the-books partnership strikingly similar to the kind Enron used to accomplish the same goals -- and which Bush has condemned. |
| USA: Bush Oil Firm Did Enron-Style Deal
by Greg Frost, Reuters
October 9th, 2002
BOSTON -- President Bush's former oil firm formed a partnership with Harvard University that concealed the company's financial woes and may have misled investors, a student and alumni group said in a report on Wednesday. |
| USA: When It's Over, Who Gets the Oil?
by Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, Washington Post
September 16th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- A U.S.-led ouster of President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and Iraqi opposition leaders. |
| Chad/Cameroon: World Bank OKs Pipeline
Environment News Service
September 16th, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC -- The construction of a 650 mile long buried pipeline to carry oil from landlocked Chad in central Africa to Cameroon's Atlantic coast is one step closer to reality over the objections of environmental and human rights groups. |
| USA: Enron Puts Assets Up for Sale
CNN/Money
August 27th, 2002
NEW YORK -- Bankrupt energy trader Enron Corp. started taking bids Tuesday for 12 assets, including electric utilities and natural gas pipelines, that make up a large portion of Enron's total holdings. |
| US: Government Secrecy and Corporate Crime
by Stephen Pizzo, Daily Enron
August 27th, 2002
What began with Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal 15 months ago to make his energy task force documents public expanded quickly to include policy making at virtually every level of government. And, after September 11, the blanket of secrecy - which had until then only covered the brass breasts of the DOJ's Lady Justice statue - darkened some of America's most valued constitutional protections. |
| USA: State Department Tries to Get ExxonMobil Suit Dropped
by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
August 7th, 2002
Weeks before the State Department told a trial judge that a lawsuit against oil giant ExxonMobil for alleged human rights abuses in Indonesia could endanger Washington's 'war on terror', Indonesia hinted the suit might put U.S. interests at risk, says Human Rights Watch (HRW). |
| Nigeria: Women Claim Victory in ChevronTexaco Oil Terminal Takeover
by D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press
July 19th, 2002
ESCRAVOS, Nigeria -- Hundreds of women carrying straw mats and thermoses abandoned ChevronTexaco's main oil terminal, ending a peaceful 10-day protest that crippled the oil giant's Nigeria operations and won an unprecedented company pledge to build modern towns out of poor villages. |
| NIGERIA: Women Stick to Oil Demands
by D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press
July 13th, 2002
Oil company executives thumped the table and even offered concessions, but the women who took over a giant oil terminal and trapped hundreds of workers inside did not budge Saturday in their demands for jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes. |
| Africa: Commission Hands Down Significant Human Rights Decision
by Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
July 3rd, 2002
Groups hailed Tuesday a sweeping and unprecedented ruling by Africa's premier human rights tribunal that held that the former military regime of Nigeria violated the economic and social rights of the Ogoni people by failing to protect their property, lands, and health from destruction caused by foreign oil companies and the Nigerian security forces. |
| World: Activists Oppose Public Financing of Caspian Oil Pipeline
by Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
June 26th, 2002
Sixty-four mainly European nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from some 37 countries are asking international financial institutions (IFIs), like the World Bank, and bilateral export credit agencies (ECAs), including the United States Export-Import Bank, to deny funding for a multi-billion-dollar oil pipeline project to run more than 1,000 miles from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean. |
| USA: EPA to Relax Pollution Rules for Power Plants
by John Heilprin, Associated Press
June 13th, 2002
The Environmental Protection Agency will relax air pollution rules to make it easier for utilities to upgrade and expand their coal-burning power plants, Bush administration sources said yesterday. |
| US: Energy Task Force Documents Show Industry Influence
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
May 22nd, 2002
Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force met with industry representatives 25 times for every one contact with conservation and public interest groups, shows a review by the group whose lawsuit prompted the release of thousands of Energy Department documents. The review was released the same day that the energy agency delivered another 1,500 pages of previously withheld task force information. |
| Central Asia: World Bank Chief In Talks Over Pipeline
Agence France Presse
May 16th, 2002
KABUL -- World Bank chief James Wolfensohn said Wednesday he had held talks about financing a fuel pipeline to channel massive gas reserves from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to India or Pakistan. |
| Costa Rica: Offshore Oil Drilling Scrapped
by David Boddiger, Latinamerica Press
May 15th, 2002
Environmentalists are praising Costa Rica's Ministry of the Environment and Energy for turning down a request from a US oil company to drill for oil along the Caribbean coast. |
| US: Internal Memos Connect Enron to California Energy Crisis
by Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle
May 7th, 2002
Energy traders for Enron used elaborate schemes with nicknames like ''Death Star'' and''Get Shorty'' to manipulate California's electricity market and boost profits, according to internal company memos released by federal regulators Monday. |
| USA: Environmental Groups Look Ahead After Vote Against Oil Drilling in Arctic Reserve
by Beth Bolitho, OneWorld US
April 22nd, 2002
Following a vote in the United States Senate last week to block changes to a bill which would have allowed oil exploration and development of a fragile wildlife habitat in the Arctic, activists are now planning their next steps to ensure that the area remains protected from future environmental threats. |
| USA: Government OKs Drilling in Alaska Oil Reserve
Reuters
April 11th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- The Interior Department on Thursday approved final rules to allow energy companies to share the costs and revenues from drilling for oil and natural gas on leased tracts in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve. |
| USA: Few Electric Companies Produce Majority of Polluting Emissions
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
March 21st, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC -- Just 20 electric utilities in the United States are responsible for half the carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide pollution emitted by the 100 largest power generating companies in the nation, a new report finds. The study by a coalition of environmental and public interest groups found that between four and six companies account for 25 percent of the emissions of each pollutant. |
| US: Mine Workers Chief Arrested at Massey Energy Protest
Environment News Service
March 15th, 2002
United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts was one of 11 people arrested Thursday at the site of a huge coal sludge spill as they demonstrated against the environmental performance of Massey Energy. |
| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians Appeal Texaco Case Ruling
by Gail Appleson, Reuters
March 11th, 2002
Rainforest Indians of Ecuador and Peru urged a U.S. appeals court on Monday to reinstate nine-year-old litigation against Texaco, alleging that toxic dumping devastated their environment and exposed residents to cancer-causing pollutants. |
| Latin America: Enron Fallout is a Hot Issue
Oil Daily
March 4th, 2002
The implications of Enron's dramatic fall extend far beyond US borders. The once-mighty energy giant's murky dealings in Latin America have emerged as a hot political issue throughout the region, where politicians in some countries are using it as an election tool or to take attention away from their own economic or political woes. |
| UK: Oil Giant BP Stops Political Donations
Associated Press
February 28th, 2002
LONDON -- BP PLC has announced it will no longer make political donations anywhere in the world, acknowledging that the relationship between corporations and government is under unprecedented scrutiny. |
| US: General Motors Protests Proposed Fuel Standards
Associated Press
February 25th, 2002
Fearing that increased fuel economy standards will doom the pickup trucks they produce, hundreds of General Motors Corp. workers chanted "Save our trucks, save our jobs," during a meeting Monday with union, company and political leaders. |
| Ecuador: Oil Pipeline Project Under Fire
by Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
February 21st, 2002
Environmental activist groups from two continents have vowed to step up their fight against a foreign-financed pipeline project that would transport oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon to the Pacific after completing a 10-day tour along the 300-mile route. |
| USA: Native Americans Speak Against Arctic Refuge Drilling Plans
by Alex Carrera, United Press International
February 12th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- A coalition of native-American groups is lobbying the Senate to ban oil drilling on the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, saying it threatens the way of life of local residents. |
| USA: Enron Lobbyist Plotted Strategy Against Democrats
by Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times
February 11th, 2002
While the Bush administration was drafting its national energy policy, a leading lobbyist for Enron Corp. was plotting strategy to turn the plan into a political weapon against Democrats, according to a newly obtained memo. |
| India: Enron's Debacle at Dabhol
by Sandip Roy, Pacific News Service
February 8th, 2002
Enron's collapse may have begun with the kind of misadventures it engaged in half a world away among the quiet coastal villages of Dabhol, India. |
| AFGHANISTAN: Oil Execs Revive Pipeline From Hell
by Daniel Fisher, Forbes.com
February 4th, 2002
It has been called the pipeline from hell, to hell, through hell. It's a 1,270-kilometer conduit, 1.2 meters in diameter, that would snake across Afghanistan to carry natural gas from eastern Turkmenistan -- with 700 billion cubic meters of proven reserves -- to energy-hungry Pakistan and beyond. |
| USA: Halliburton -- To the Victors Go the Markets
by Jordan Green, Facing South
February 1st, 2002
The influence of big energy corporations in the Bush Administration is no secret. But the story of Dick Cheney and his former company, Halliburton Co., has received little attention -- and it may be the most important. |
| USA: Fired Andersen Partner Refuses to Testify on Enron
by Kevin Drawbaugh and Susan Cornwell, Reuters
January 24th, 2002
A fired partner of auditor Andersen refused to testify to Congress on the destruction of evidence in the collapse of energy giant Enron, prompting lawmakers to say he was frustrating their probe. |
| USA: VP Tried to Aid Enron in India
by Timothy J. Burger, New York Daily News
January 18th, 2002
Vice President Cheney tried to help Enron collect a $64 million debt from a giant energy project in India, government documents obtained by the Daily News show. |
| Ecuador: Oil Spill Contaminates Amazon
Environment News Service
January 10th, 2002
QUITO, Ecuador -- Oil from an abandoned exploratory oil well in the Ecuadorian Amazon is spilling uncontrolled into the environment months after government authorities were first notified, according to an international wildlife conservation group. |
| USA: Auditor Says Enron Documents Gone
by Marcy Gordon, Associated Press
January 10th, 2002
WASHINGTON -- The firm that audited the books of collapsed Enron Corp., Arthur Andersen LLP, disclosed Thursday that a ''significant but undetermined'' number of documents related to the company had been destroyed. |
| USA: Unocal Advisor Named Representative to Afghanistan
by Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site
January 3rd, 2002
President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company Unocal, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. The nomination was announced December 31, nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul. |
| China: Oil Workers Revolt Over Drilling Rights
Reuters
December 19th, 2001
BEIJING -- Their battle cry was ''Get to Work'' and they came in three shifts, but the Chinese oil drillers weren't brandishing their crowbars and wooden sticks as tools. |
| USA: Enron on Brink of Bankruptcy
by Kristen Hays, Associated Press
November 29th, 2001
HOUSTON -- The slick financing that helped turn Enron Corp. into a mighty power-brokering dynamo became its Achilles' heel, leaving the energy trader teetering toward bankruptcy after a smaller rival abandoned plans to buy it. |
| UZBEKISTAN: US Ally Hopes War Will Lead to Oil Investment
by Priscilla Patton, Globalvision News Network
November 26th, 2001
The Uzbek government hopes to parlay its close working relationship with the United States during the ''war on terrorism'' into closer economic ties, garnering much-needed direct investment for its underdeveloped petrochemical sector and increased bilateral trade, according to Sadyq Safayev, former Uzbek ambassador to the U.S. and first deputy foreign minister since May. |
| USA: Enron, Dynegy Confirm Possible Merger Talks
by Jeff Franks, Reuters
November 8th, 2001
HOUSTON -- Enron Corp., plagued by investor doubts and under the gun to shore up its crumbling finances, said on Thursday it was talking with power trading rival Dynegy Inc. about a possible merger. |
| USA: Oil Firms Fund 'Tobacco Terrorism'
by John Creed, Anchorage Daily News
November 7th, 2001
We interrupt our regularly scheduled sense of decency for the following heart-breaking news bulletin: A huge tobacco company is spreading disease across our state with help from Williams Alaska Petroleum and Tesoro Alaska. |
| USA: Court Throws Out Exxon Valdez Fine
by Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
November 7th, 2001
A jury's $5 billion punitive damage award for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was too high compared to the damage caused and the sums the company already has spent for cleanup and compensation, a federal appeals court ruled today. |
| USA: The Real Price of Oil
by Mark Hertsgaard, MotherJones.com
October 15th, 2001
Perhaps it's a sign of politics inching back toward business as usual: Congressional Republicans are exploiting the Sept. 11 terror attacks to push the Bush administration's plan for an all-out increase in energy production. |
| Australia: Police Move on Melbourne Climate Protestors
Environment News Service
September 27th, 2001
MELBOURNE, Australia -- Police have moved in to disband protesters opposing construction of a gas fired power generator and pipeline in Somerton, a Melbourne neighborhood. The demonstrators, from Friends of the Earth Melbourne, say the generator will destroy the fragile ecosystem of the Merri Creek today and over the weekend. |
| USA: It's the Oil, Stupid
by Johnny Angel, LA Weekly
September 26th, 2001
In the orgy of examination of who and what is to blame for the events of September 11, we must have heard every conceivable explanation. The American right, as exemplified by President Bush, Fox News and the opinion page of the The Wall Street Journal, blames envy of American values and success. The extreme right blames secular humanism, gay rights and the other bogeymen they love to flog. The center faults lax airport security and a general lack of preparedness, while the left, all but ignored by the corporate media, blames American imperialism and in some cases our unconditional support for Israel. |
| USA: Wartime Opportunists
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
September 6th, 2001
Corporate interests and their proxies are looking to exploit the September 11 tragedy to advance a self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with corporate profits and dangerous ideologies. |
| USA: Exxon CEO Draws Anger Over Climate Change
by Thaddeus Herrick, Wall Street Journal
August 29th, 2001
Like his predecessors, Exxon Mobil Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Lee Raymond keeps a relatively low profile. He's reluctant to grant interviews and make public appearances. But ever since he assailed the Kyoto initiative to combat global warming in a speech a few years ago, Mr. Raymond has been inextricably linked to the issue. |
| USA: Big Oil, Gas Funding Ads for Bush's Energy Policy
by William E. Gibson, Orlando Sentinel
August 19th, 2001
The big oil and gas companies that spent nearly $2 million to help elect President Bush last year are pouring millions more into an advertising campaign this summer to help sell his energy policy in Congress. |
| Germany: Climate Deal Is Weak
by Bonner R. Cohen, Earth Times News Service
July 24th, 2001
One of the surest indications that trouble is at hand is when diplomats start hiding behind catchy phrases and meaningless terminology. Participants and observers to the COP-6 Climate Change conference here have been told that ''breakthrough,'' ''deal,'' or ''compromise'' (take your pick) had been achieved. |
| Colombia: Americans Blamed in Raid
by Karl Penhaul, San Francisco Chronicle
July 15th, 2001
Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security for a U.S. oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged in a official inquiry. |
| Colombia: Oxy's Relationship with Military Turns Deadly
Drillbits and Tailings (Project Underground)
June 30th, 2001
New evidence has surfaced in a Colombian government inquiry exposing active collaboration between security forces protecting oil operations of the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum (OXY) and the notorious Colombian military in one of the country' deadliest attacks on civilians. |
| UK: MI6 'Firm' Spied on Green Groups
by Maurice Chittenden and Nicholas Rufford, The Sunday Times (London)
June 17th, 2001
A private intelligence firm with close links to MI6 spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP. |
| Sudan: Oil Money Is Fueling Civil War
by Karl Vick, Washington Post
June 11th, 2001
In a civil war that seems to be fueled by so much -- religion, for example, because one side is Muslim and the other side is not, and race, because one side is Arab and the other African -- nothing has supercharged the fighting in southern Sudan quite like Nile Blend crude. |
| KENYA: Japan Suspends Funding for Sondu Miriu Dam
by Jennifer Wanjiru, Environment News Service
June 4th, 2001
Citing "environmental disruption and corruption" in a letter to the government of Kenya, Japan's Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka indicated that suspension of funding for the Sondu Miriu hydropower dam project was ''a response to criticism from environmental campaigners and differences between Kenya and Japan over further funding.'' |
| USA: Bush Energy Plan Faulted, Ignores Human Rights
Reuters
May 31st, 2001
A leading advocacy group has taken the Bush administration to task for failing to include human rights considerations in its new national energy plan, according to a letter obtained by Reuters yesterday. |
| USA: Bush Administration OKs Drilling on Native Lands
by Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times
May 22nd, 2001
A federal land agency on Monday upheld billionaire Philip Anschutz's right to drill an exploratory oil well in an area of south-central Montana where Native American tribes want to preserve sacred rock drawings. |
| USA: Bush Calls for More Coal, Oil and Nukes
by Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters
May 17th, 2001
President Bush called for expanding U.S. coal, oil and nuclear power production and offered conservation incentives on Thursday to beat back high gas prices, blackouts and ''a darker future.'' |
| Nigeria: Shell Oil Spill Increases Tensions in Ogoniland
AllAfrica.com
May 8th, 2001
Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria finally managed to cap the oil gushing from one of its wells in Ogoniland at the weekend, but the well's blow-out and the resulting flood of oil and gas into the immediate environment has once more intensified tensions between the giant oil company and the half-million strong Ogoni Kingdom. |
| USA: Cheney Vows to Stick With Fossil Fuels
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
May 1st, 2001
The United States will focus on increased domestic production of oil and greater use of coal for electricity generation in a new national energy strategy to be announced in a few weeks, Vice President Richard Cheney said Monday. |
| USA: Bush Task Force to Recommend Alaska Drilling
by Patricia Wilson, Reuters
April 23rd, 2001
Seeking to clarify a muddied message on oil exploration in the Alaska wilderness, the White House said on Monday President Bush's energy panel would call for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. |
| USA: Pipeline Leaks Oil on Alaska Tundra
by Yereth Rosen, Reuters
April 17th, 2001
A hole in a pipeline used for transporting by-products at the Kuparuk oil field on Alaska's North Slope has resulted in the biggest spill of industrial material onto the tundra in recent years, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) said on Tuesday. |
| Australia: Activists Discuss World Boycott of U.S. Oil Firms
Associated Press
April 12th, 2001
Green groups from around the world were drawing up a global action plan Friday that could include boycotts of U.S. energy giants to force the United States to honor its Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction commitments. |
| USA: 500 Protest Enron Plant
by David Fleshler, Sun-Sentinel
March 27th, 2001
More than 500 people packed the Pompano Beach Civic Center on Monday night in a formidable display of opposition to Enron Corp.'s plans for a power plant next to Florida's Turnpike. |
| Nigeria: Workers Buck IMF
by William Wallis, Financial Times
March 22nd, 2001
The Nigerian Labour Congress yesterday threatened to render Africa's most populous nation ungovernable if President Olusegun Obasanjo went ahead with plans to phase in the deregulation of fuel supplies in an attempt to end chronic shortages. |
| Sudan: Oil Firms Accused of Fueling Mass Displacement and Killing
by Victoria Brittain and Terry Macalister, The Guardian (London)
March 15th, 2001
Oil companies operating in Sudan are complicit in the systematic depopulating of large areas of the country and atrocities against civilians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed and displaced from the areas around the oil fields, according to a report to be published today. |
| USA: Federal Worker Fired For Posting Refuge Map
by Lisa Getter, Los Angeles Times
March 15th, 2001
Last week, Ian Thomas posted a map on a U.S. government Web site of the caribou calving areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area the Bush administration wants to open up for oil exploration. This week, Thomas is looking for a new job. |
| USA: Bush's Reversal on Greenhouse Gas Cuts
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
March 14th, 2001
President George W. Bush did an abrupt about face Tuesday, reversing a previous pledge to legislate limits on carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants. Bush said such a rule would prove too costly, launching another in a slew of recent federal and state government attempts to roll back environmental protections in favor of controlling energy prices. |
| USA: The Unimog, Daimler's New Polluter
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
February 22nd, 2001
DaimlerChrysler announced plans Wednesday to produce a version of the German military vehicle, the Unimog, for sale in the United States, with production planned to begin in January. |
| ECUADOR: Nationwide Protests End with Triumph by Indians
by Kintto Lucas, Inter Press Service
February 7th, 2001
The nationwide protests or ''uprising'' by Ecuador's indigenous people that has brought much of this Andean nation to a standstill over the past two weeks ended Wednesday with the signing of a pact with President Gustavo Noboa, who agreed to lower the price of gasoline, one of the demonstrators' main demands. |
| Ecuador: Army Crackdown Leaves Four Indian Protesters Dead
by Kintto Lucas, Inter Press Service
February 5th, 2001
The protests by indigenous groups against the government's economic austerity policies have brought large areas of the country to a standstill for the past two weeks, intensifying Monday when four people, including a child, were killed when the army cracked down on demonstrators in the Amazon province of Napo. |
| Pakistan: Shell Under Fire for Pipeline
Environmental News Service
January 29th, 2001
Environmentalists have taken multinational oil giant Shell to court over its plans to build a pipeline for mineral and gas exploration in Pakistan's Kirthar National Park. |
| Nigeria: Ogonis Say Arms Were Sponsored by Shell
by Ahamefula Ogbu and Chuks Akunna, AllAfrica.com
January 25th, 2001
The multinational oil giant, the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC) was yesterday accused of importing arms and ammunitions into the country with which destabilisation was engendered in the Niger Delta. |
| USA: Ten Worst Corporations of 2000
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
January 3rd, 2001
Here is the annual Top 10 Worst Corporations of 2000 list compiled by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. This year, rushing to the head of the pack of irresponsible biotech companies was the French corporation Aventis, the maker of Cry9C corn, sold under the name StarLink. |
| USA: Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein
by Martin A. Lee, San Francisco Bay Guardian
November 13th, 2000
During former defense secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package last July when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate |
| USA: Corporate Giants Begin Greenhouse Gas Trading Program
by Danielle Knight, Inter Press Service
October 18th, 2000
Seven corporations, including several of the world's largest multinational companies, have joined with an environmental group in seeking ways to trade emission permits to reduce their production of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. But critics say the partnership is just more of the same hot air from the world's fossil fuel industry. |
| USA: Corporate Giants Begin Greenhouse Gas Trading
Inter Press Service
October 18th, 2000
Seven corporations, including some of the world's largest multinational companies, have joined with an environmental group in seeking ways to trade emission permits to reduce their production of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. |
| USA: Chevron-Texaco Merger Criticized
Institute for Public Accuracy
October 16th, 2000
Chevron has just agreed to acquire Texaco for $36 billion. This follows the BP-Amoco and Exxon-Mobil mergers. The following analysts are available for comments. |
| Venezuela: Oil Workers Strike
by Fabiola Sanchez, Associated Press
October 11th, 2000
As tensions mounted between President Hugo Chavez and opposition labor groups, tens of thousands of oil workers went on strike Wednesday to demand higher wages. |
| USA: Government Ties Helped Cheney and Halliburton Make Millions
by John Rega, Bloomberg News
October 6th, 2000
While the comment came in a light-hearted exchange with his Democratic opponent Joe Lieberman, Cheney's reply left out how closely Dallas-based Halliburton's fortunes are linked to the U.S. government. The world's largest oil services firm is a leading U.S. defense contractor and has benefited from financial guarantees granted by U.S. agencies that promote exports. |
| USA: Koch Industries Indicted for Air, Hazardous Waste Violations
by Brian Hansen, Environment News Service
October 2nd, 2000
A Texas based oil conglomerate and four of its employees were indicted last week on 97 counts of violating federal clean air and hazardous waste laws. The charges come less than one year after the company was slapped with the largest civil penalty ever levied under federal environmental statutes. |
| USA: Shell to Face Lawsuit for Saro-Wiwa Execution
by Karen McGregor, The Independent
September 19th, 2000
Allegations that the oil multinational Shell aided and abetted the torture and murder of Nigerian activists including the executed writer Ken Saro-Wiwa will be tested by a full jury trial in New York, after the oil company's attempts to have the case thrown out were rejected. |
| USA: Billion Dollar NAFTA Challenge to California MTBE Ban
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
September 11th, 2000
The Canadian challenger, Methanex Corporation, has argued that a plan to remove the toxic chemical MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) from California's gasoline violates the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). |
| France: Fuel Prices Ignite Protests
Financial Times
September 6th, 2000
French riot police prevented farmers from blocking freight access to the Channel Tunnel as protests against petrol prices continued to escalate. |
| USA: Chevron Will Pay $7 Million for Clean Air Violations
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
August 24th, 2000
Chevron USA, the second largest U.S. oil company, has agreed to pay a $6 million fine and spend $1 million on environmental improvements to settle a federal lawsuit over Clean Air Act violations at a California offshore oil terminal. |
| Bangladesh: Shell Oil Drilling Threatens Tiger Preserve
by Jonathan Leake, Sunday Times of London
August 20th, 2000
SHELL, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, is planning to survey the world's biggest tiger reserve after company geologists pinpointed it as one of the richest potential sources of oil and gas on earth. |
| USA: Oil Corporations Woo Democrats
Associated Press
August 14th, 2000
While Democrats will be partying all across Tinseltown this week, these events go far beyond typical convention-week soirees. Each is aimed at the Democrat who would take over a key committee if the party managed to regain control of Congress in the November elections. |
| USA: U'wa March Trashes Gore
by Tamara Straus, AlterNet
August 14th, 2000
To put it mildly, the U'wa are a touchy issue for Gore. The presidential candidate owns between $500,000 and $1 million in Occidental stock and his father, Al Gore Sr., served as chair of the board for 28 years, earning an annual salary of $500,000. The elder Gore was such a close political ally of the company that Armand Hammer, Occidental's founder and CEO, liked to say that he had Gore ''in my back pocket.'' |
| India: World Bank Admits Failure of Coal Project
UN Wire
August 14th, 2000
According to the report, thousands of villagers in eastern and central India received no compensation after state-owned Coal India used a $530 million loan from the World Bank in 1997 to raze their homes in a coal mine modernization scheme. Although resettling, compensating and retraining farmers as entrepreneurs was part of the loan deal, Coal India had no experience in these activities and was unable to carry them out. |
| USA: BP's Arctic Oil Project Stalled as Greenpeace Occupies Barge
by Neville Judd, Environment News Service
August 7th, 2000
The environmental group Greenpeace International says it took the action this morning because British Petroleum's (BP) Northstar Development will fuel global warming and open the Arctic to offshore oil expansion. |
| USA: Dick Cheney's Oil Connections
Drillbits and Tailings (Project Underground)
July 25th, 2000
Having ensured the continued flow of cheap oil from the Gulf by waging a war with Iraq, and after his boss, George Bush's ouster from office by Clinton in 1992, Dick Cheney turned his attention to the corporate world. |
| USA: Fronting for Big Coal
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
July 11th, 2000
So, we're sitting in our office, and under the door comes a note advising us that there will be a press conference the next day where African-American and Hispanic groups will release a report showing how minority populations will suffer most if the United Nations Global Warming Treaty (Kyoto agreement) passes the U.S. Senate. |
| USA: Time to Cap Big Oil's Profit Gusher
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
July 3rd, 2000
The startling concentration of economic power that has resulted from the U.S. merger wave of the last several years is going to require new levels of government intervention in the marketplace. |
| USA: Oil Money Gushing into Bush Campaign
by H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press
July 3rd, 2000
WASHINGTON -- While locked in a string of disputes with the Clinton administration, the oil industry has pumped more than $1.5 million into George W. Bush's campaign. Oil companies will be seeking Bush's help on a range of issues, should he be elected president. |
| Nigeria: Court Fines Shell $40 Million for 1970 Spill
Environment News Service
June 26th, 2000
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria -- A Rivers State High Court in Port Harcourt has ordered Royal Dutch/Shell to pay US$40 million in compensation for an oil spill which happened in 1970 in Ogoniland. |
| USA: City Sues Big Oil for Millions Over Polluted Drinking Water
by Timna Tanners, Reuters
June 21st, 2000
SANTA MONICA -- The California beach city of Santa Monica is suing 18 oil companies for damages that could exceed $200 million, claiming that the firms polluted drinking water wells with the possibly cancer-causing gasoline additive MTBE. |
| USA: ExxonMobil Shareholders Use Stock to Push Change
by Jonathan Fox, Dallas Observer
June 8th, 2000
As with other behemoth multinational companies, Irving-based ExxonMobil's annual meeting is strictly a formality. Most of the crowd that packed the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in downtown Dallas to vote on shareholder resolutions last week were retirees who own relatively small amounts of company stock. |
| USA: Occidental Chairman Sues Protestors for Harassment
by Timna Tanners, Reuters
April 4th, 2000
The chairman of Occidental Petroleum is staging his own protest against the human rights groups who picket his home and office --he is suing them for harassment and wants a court to grant him damages. |
| USA: Oxy CEO Confronted by U'wa Leader in Congresswoman's Office
Environment News Service
March 30th, 2000
A surprise encounter in the Congressional office of Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney today brought the vice president of Occidental Petroleum face to face with the president of the U'wa indigenous people who are fighting the company's oil drilling on their traditional land in Colombia. |
| Burma: US Oil Giant Pulls Out of Country
Agence France Presse
March 29th, 2000
Oil services provider Baker Hughes has become the latest United States firm to pull out of Burma, human rights campaigners and the firm's local partner said Wednesday. |
| Philippines: Strike Over Gas Hike Paralyzes Southern City
by Edwin O. Fernandez and Charlie C. Sease, Philippine Daily Inquirer (Internet Edition)
March 23rd, 2000
Jeepney drivers and operators, slumdwellers and other sectoral representatives yesterday took to the streets to demand an oil price rollback and the resignation or ouster of President Estrada. |
| USA: General Motors Quits Global Warming Lobby Group
by David Goodman, Associated Press
March 15th, 2000
Environmentalists are claiming victory following General Motors Corp.'s decision to quit a lobbying group that has led the opposition to a 1997 global warming treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan. |
| Netherlands: Greenpeace Buys Shell Stock
Associated Press
March 14th, 2000
The Amsterdam-based environmentalist group announced the purchase of $240,000 worth of Royal Dutch/Shell Group equity to try to pressure the Anglo-Dutch energy conglomerate to build a huge solar panel production plant. |
| JAPAN: People Power Overcomes Nuclear Power
by Jonathan Watts, The Guardian (UK)
February 23rd, 2000
Japan's nuclear power industry suffered a historic defeat yesterday when one of the country's biggest utilities was forced to scrap plans for a power plant that it has been trying to build for 37 years. |
| World: Who is Paying the Cost of Our Fuel Bills?
by George Monbiot, The Guardian Weekly
February 10th, 2000
The effects of global warming are cruelly ironic: the impact of fossil-fuel consumption will be most severe in regions where the least fuel has been consumed. Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming drier: in East Africa droughts of the kind that used to strike every 40 years are arriving every four or five. |
| Canada: Oil Company Targeted for Ties to Sudanese Military
by Mark Bourrie, Inter Press Service
February 7th, 2000
An oil company headquartered in Alberta, Canada, is the target of a divestment campaign aimed at forcing the company to stop its partnership with the Sudanese government in the exploitation of oil fields in the war-torn southern region of Sudan. |
| USA: Closing the Lid on the Chlorine Industry
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on Corporations
January 31st, 2000
Thornton is a research fellow at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. His forthcoming book, Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strategy (March 2000, MIT Press), argues that chlorine and the organochlorine chemicals made from it pose a global health and environmental threat. |
| A Movement Blossoms: Cross-Border Activism Picks Up Speed
by Kent Paterson, Borderlines
October 20th, 1998
In October 1998, after years of protest by an unprecedented bi-national coalition, the proposed Sierra Blanca nuclear waste dump was defeated. The proposed site for the commercial nuclear waste dump was just 16 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. |
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