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Some twenty one years after the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, there is some hope that finally, finally, the oil polluted Ogoniland in the Niger Delta will begin to be cleaned up from decades of exploitation.

The fallout from Friday’s crude by rail crash in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon is intensifying after numerous local elected officials called for a temporary halt to the so-called “bomb trains” through the area until the cause of the crash is known and wreckage cleared. However, the company involved, Union Pacific, has blataently ignored their concerns and started running trains again, even though the clean-up of the crash site is still ongoing.

The fire that the locals call “the beast” is back with a vengeance. Last week, the wildfire that ravaged parts of the tar sands town of Fort McMurray in Alberta seemed to have done its worst. But in recent days it has returned and headed to the tar sands camps north of the town, travelling at around 30-40 metres per second.

Oil giant Shell is still struggling to clean up an estimated 90,000 gallons of oil spilt in to the Gulf of Mexico last Thursday. This latest spill has led to increased calls by local residents on President Obama not to open additional leases in the next Five Year Plan for the Gulf.

For some time now scientists have been warning about the dangers of fracking and toxic chemicals and how they might include carcinogens, reproductive toxicants and what are known as endocrine disrupting chemicals or EDCs.

As the fracking industry tries to expand internationally, being promoted as a so-called clean bridge fuel, it is increasingly clear the industry has not one, but two, Achilles heels.

The leading Russian oil company, Rosneft, is currently under investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office on the Russian island of Sakhalin for a large oil spill which occurred last week.

The serial offender Shell is being sued. Again. The oil giant finds itself in a court in London today for the second time in five years for its ongoing chronic pollution problems in the Niger Delta.

There is growing outrage over pollution of two important rivers after three oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon.

One of the main arguments that the pro-frackers put forward about adopting the controversial technology is that it is a clean, secure fuel that can be used to bridge the gap between dirtier fossil fuels and cleaner renewable energy.