Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Later today, Donald Trump will make his first address to Congress, where he is expected to outline an “historic increase in defence spending” at the expense of foreign aid and environmental protection programmes.
As if night follows day, it was only a matter of time before the climate deniers would try and serenade their climate denying President, Donald Trump, to kick the US out of the UN agreement on climate, long seen as their bete noir.
Once again Big Oil has been forced to rely on brutal militarized force to bludgeon, bully, beat and intimidate peaceful water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. But in the face of such violence and intimidation, the growing movement against new fossil fuels will not be intimidated, it will only grow.
For years it has been apparent that the days of the oil industry finding so-called “easy oil” are over. And in its desperate attempt to continue our fossil fuel addiction, the industry is either attempting to exploit unconventional oil, like shale or the tar sands, or explore in new frontier areas like the Arctic.
Earlier this month when Donald Trump cancelled legislation that required oil and gas companies to disclose taxes and other payments to foreign governments, the President said he was “bringing back jobs big-league.”
Later today, Scott “Polluting Pruitt” could be confirmed as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, after a vote in the Senate. The fact that Pruitt, a man who has sued the EPA fourteen times, could be even considered for the job is a scandal. But it gets worse.
In his first outing as Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson may have been quiet, but the world’s climate leaders were not. Ahead of the G20 meeting of foreign ministers, hosted by Germany in Bonn, German government officials didn’t mince words: “You can’t fight climate change by putting up barbed wire,” said Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a not-so-thinly veiled swipe at Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump’s climate denial, and the Trump Administration’s racist immigration policies.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been using alternative facts to assess the climate impact of gas pipelines. We set the record straight with new briefings on the impact of the proposed Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines.
Yesterday, a federal judge refused to issue a temporary injunction against construction of the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The latest setback for the First Nations fighting the pipeline means that it could be “operational in as little as 30 days”, according to a lawyer for the company building it, Energy Transfer Partners.
The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has confirmed that he is “very interested” is using the city’s pension funds to put pressure on the banks that are helping to fund the highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline.
