Canada’s dirty tar sands oil reserves have been turned “into a public-relations nightmare” argues the Financial Times today in its eight page pull-out on Canadian energy, forcing the industry to fight back against this “toxic perception”. Part of this nightmare...
Earlier this year I worked with Friends of the Earth on a report that exposed the extent of Canadian lobbying on the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), a landmark piece of legislation by the EU which hopes to reduce CO2 emissions...
I’m continuing this week's tar sands theme. There seems to be no limits to how many people the Canadians will annoy in their attempt to impose the dirty tar sands on the world’s oil markets. There is also no limit...
As the decision day for the Keystone XL pipeline draws ever nearer, the amount of rubbish being written by its proponents grows ever greater. Yesterday an article in the Vancouver Sun basically said the argument was very simple: it was...
That the international oil majors face unprecedented challenges in growing their resource base is well known. Shut out of the richest pickings in OPEC countries and increasingly out performed by national oil companies, they have been forced to invest in...
Numerous recent polls reveal that the American people believe that Congress is more responsive to their campaign donors than their own constituents. In addition, Americans of all affiliations clearly favor ending oil industry handouts. The question is, whose side is...
Sixteen years ago I wrote a book called Green Backlash, that looked at the growing backlash against the environmental movement worldwide. One chapter, called "Culture Wars and Conspiracy tales", looked at the warped view of many of the conspiracies of...
The world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton has signalled it too wants to get in on the shale gas revolution sweeping the US, despite the growing controversy over fracking. In a deal announced late last week, BHP agreed to pay...
For many years now, a number of activists and analysts have argued that if we are serious about tackling climate change then the reserves of oil and gas in the ground need to be seen as liabilities and not assets....
As I have often written about in the past, the oil industry is all about risk and reward. At some stage it has to lure large scale investors to bet large amounts of money that it has found large reserves...
