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It is hard to believe but it is nearly five years since BP’s reckless behaviour caused arguably America’s worst environmental disaster.

We can’t go South, we can’t go West, we can’t go East, so, hey, lets’ go North”. That is the latest thinking of the Canadians in their increasingly desperate attempts to export the dirty, carbon intensive tar sands from Alberta.

For the oil industry business comes first. After years of preparation, on Saturday Exxon began drilling a $700 million well in the Kara Sea in Russia's Arctic. It is Russia’s most northerly well.

If there is one country where Shell’s broken promises ring hollower than anywhere else it is in Nigeria.

The BP gulf oil spill may not have happened without government subsidies. In fact, at least two major subsidies were used both before and after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon to support BP.

Finally one of Canada’s leading independent tar sands producers has conceded that it is partly to blame for a series of leaks of bitumen in Alberta that have been going on for over a year.

Late last week, the Norwegian government issued a license to energy giant Statoil to allow it to start drilling in the controversial Arctic waters of the Barents Sea.

And so the battle lines have been drawn. On the one hand you have Canada’s federal government, ever eager to please Big Oil, which has just agreed to let Enbridge build its highly controversial $8 billion Northern Gateway pipeline from the toxic tar sands of Alberta to the rugged coast of British Colombia.

A Plains All American pipeline spilled 10,000 gallons of oil in Los Angeles. The company is heavily subsidize and a major crude by rail company.

As the fourth anniversary of BP’s devastating Deepwater Horizon spill nears, new research reveals that many species of wildlife are still struggling to recover.