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| INDIA: Camera Obscura and the manufacture of happiness
by Aman Sethi & Priscilla Jebaraj, The Hindu
March 6th, 2012
An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities — such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha — without due process. |
| ARCTIC: Shell Launches Preemptive Legal Strike For Ocean Drilling
by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times
February 29th, 2012
Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer. |
| U.S.: TransCanada Pipeline Foes See U.S. Bias in E-Mails
by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times
October 3rd, 2011
E-mails obtained by Friends of the Earth paint a picture of a collaborative relationship between lobbyists for TransCanada and the U.S. State department, the agency that has final say over a 1,661 mile pipeline that will transport tar sands crude from Alberta to Texas. Embassy officials in Ottawa procured invitations to Fourth of July parties for TransCanada officials and shared information with the company about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meetings. |
| LIBERIA: Hunting for Liberia’s Missing Millions
by Doreen Carvjal, New York Times
May 30th, 2010
How much money did Charles G. Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia, siphon out of his war-shattered country, and where is it? Investigators are developing a new strategy involving filing civil damage claims against companies, governments and international banks that they contend aided Mr. Taylor in illegal transactions. |
| US: Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP
by Joe Stephens, Washington Post
May 24th, 2010
The Nature Conservancy faces a problem: a potential backlash as its supporters learn that BP and the world's largest environmental organization long ago forged a relationship that has lent BP an Earth-friendly image and helped fund the Conservancy. The crude emanating from BP's well threatens to befoul a number of alliances between energy conglomerates and environmental nonprofits. |
| US: Oil Hits Home, Spreading Arc of Frustration
by Campbell Robertson, Clifford Krauss and John M. Broder, New York Times
May 24th, 2010
More than a month has passed since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico and frustrating all efforts to contain it. The disaster underscores the enduring laxity of federal regulation of offshore operations and has shown the government to be almost wholly at the mercy of BP and of Transocean, the company leasing the rig. |
| WORLD: Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs
by Ben Casselman and Guy Chazen, Wall Street Journal
May 17th, 2010
Dealing with a deep-sea spill is a a problem that spans the industry, whose major players include Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Without adequately planning for trouble, the oil business has focused on developing experimental equipment and techniques to drill in ever deeper waters, according to a Wall Street Journal examination. |
| US: U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits
by Ian Urbina, New York Times
May 13th, 2010
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. |
| UK/CANADA: Tar sands crude is reaching British petrol stations, Greenpeace says
by Terry Macalister, The Guardian (UK)
May 9th, 2010
While City investors have begun to question the role of companies such as BP and Shell in the tar sands business, a new report by Greenpeace claims British motorists are unwitting users of diesel and petrol derived from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. The carbon-heavy production methods involved make tar sands extraction particularly damaging to the environment. |
| US: BP touts itself as 'green,' but faces PR disaster with 'BP oil spill'
by Paul Farhi, Washington Post
May 6th, 2010
Ever careful of its public image, BP has been careful not to invoke its name in regard to the massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "We refer to it as Gulf of Mexico response," said Andrew Gowers, the company's spokesman. The name of a disaster can be critical, both as a historic matter and the more immediate matters of image, public relations and legal liability. |
| US: FBI Probes Explosion in West Virginia Mine
by Kris Maher and Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal
April 30th, 2010
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal probe of the deadly explosion at a Massey Energy Co. mine in West Virginia in early April that killed 29 miners, according to people familiar with the matter. In a statement on Friday Massey Energy said, "Massey has no knowledge of criminal wrongdoing." |
| US: BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act
by Campbell Robertson and Eric Lipton, New York Times
April 30th, 2010
The Obama administration began Friday to publicly chastise BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak, just as BP did last year when it told the government such an event was highly unlikely. |
| US: Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs
by Clifford Krauss , New York Times
April 29th, 2010
BP says that the offshore drilling accident that is spewing thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico could cost the company several hundred million dollars. Nobody really knows whether the oil giant is being too conservative about the cost for the April 20 accident, which some experts say could end up as the biggest oil spill in history. |
| CANADA: Munk takes on mine protesters, defends capitalism
by John Spears, The Star
April 28th, 2010
Mark Ekepa journeyed from Papua New Guinea to tell the shareholders of Barrick Gold Corp. how police had burned down his house near the Barrick’s Porgera mine. Idolia Bornones travelled from Chile to say that Barrick operations are damaging local glaciers and rivers. But Barrick chairman Peter Munk was unrepentant as he faced the company’s annual meeting. |
| AFRICA: E Guinea ejected from industry clean-up body
by Tom Burgis, Financial Times
April 16th, 2010
A pioneering initiative aimed at cleaning up the oil and mining industries has ejected Equatorial Guinea from its ranks. The board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a voluntary coalition of companies, governments, donors and civil society groups, had been under pressure from activists on granting extensions to 17 states that had missed a deadline to have audits of their industries independently verified. |
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