Blog

The new year has started just like the old one ended, with the oil price continuing its downward slide. This morning oil dropped to five and a half year low as over supply continued to spook the markets.

And so the free-fall continues. The price of Brent crude has fallen this morning below $60 a barrel for the first time since July 2009. The price of US crude is below $55.

The US shale industry faces a Darwinian struggle over the next few months as only the fittest producers will survive as the price of crude plunges to $50 a barrel, the Bank of America has warned.

The message from the markets for the North American oil industry is summed up in four simple words by the Financial Times today: “No respite for oil.”

The President was right on Keystone XL being an export pipeline. The Washington Post Fact Checker got it wrong.

When legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix wrote the song “Castles Made of Sand,” the critics argued that the sand metaphor symbolised “the temporary nature of existence” ” and “how nothing can be taken for granted”.

Where we played our game -- a game of communities rising up, of organizing, of using facts to guide us, of running straight at our progressive values and being unashamed of them -- we won. And those wins were beautiful.

The oil industry is in surprisingly bullish mood. As America prepares to go to the polls today in the crucial mid-term elections, Republicans have signalled that, if victorious, they will immediately push to free up exports of gas and oil and pass legislation forcing him to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

It’s a not so Happy Halloween if you live near fracking wells in the United States. Yet more research has been published which shows significant evidence of the risk to health.

Southern Pacific Resources was the first tar sands producer to commit all of its production to crude-by-rail. Today, the company is on the brink of disaster.