As oil climbed to a humungous record of $135 a barrel, yesterday US senators once again lined up Big Oil's biggest executives and pummeled them with questions. "Where is the corporate conscience?" Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, asked the...
So are speculators pushing the oil price up, and if so by how much? A leading American senator yesterday pressed the top futures market regulator for more information about speculation by big investment funds in crude oil futures. Commodity Futures...
The financial backlash against BP’s investment in tar sands has begun. A group of American and British shareholders in BP have joined forces to protest over the oil company's decision to start extracting oil from Canadian tar sands. Eleven fund...
Most people believe oil is running out and governments need to find another fuel, an international poll has found. On average, 70 percent of respondents in 15 countries said they thought oil supplies had peaked. Only 22 percent of the...
Oil prices are going up, food prices too. And so are the number of oil wells being drilled in the US. According to the American Petroleum Institute, more than 17,000 new oil wells were tapped in 2007, the most active...
A group of US senators is pressing President Bush to halt billions of dollars in sophisticated arms sales to Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf oil producers unless they agree to pump more oil. The senators said if Saudi Arabia...
Oh the irony, the poor starve, yet the rich squabble over subsidies. European biodiesel producers have triggered a fresh transatlantic trade war by urging the EU to impose punitive duties on cheap imports from the US. They claim that low-priced...
Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official has admitted. It is a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and...
Are the days of the SUV and large gas-guzzlers over? The New York Times reports how “Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.” According to the Times: “In what industry analysts...
When the Exxon Valdez ploughed into Bligh Reef in 1989 causing one of the greatest environmental crimes of the last century, I remember someone saying “lawyers not yet born will work on this one”. And so that prediction has nearly...
