Boom goes the oil industry, bust goes the climate
There was the tar sands boom and then the shale gas boom. Then there was the export boom and the tight oil boom. Now it seems there's the midstream boom.
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2026
2026
BP refinery rollover shows tar sands refineries need to clean up
It’s taken four years and millions of dollars in lawyers for BP to finally agree to do what it should have done in the first place at its Whiting, Indiana refinery. The refinery has been constructing new equipment to enable...
A Road Map to Renewal or Ruin?
The oil boys from Houston must be wriggling with delight after President Obama’s official jobs council called for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as more pipelines. “We should allow more access to...
Dash for Shale Gas Undermines Wind
The last time that America’s pro-wind lobby came together for its regular get-together was in California in 2007. That time there were 5,000 attendees and the installed wind capacity in the US was 17 gigawatts. Four years later and on...
Sceptic Gets $1 Million from Oil and Coal
Two Greenpeace-related stories in two days for you. Yesterday the blog was about how Greenpeace was attacking VW for its poor performance on fuel efficiency and for blocking climate progress in Europe. Let’s turn back to the US for a...
Could Keystone XL turn out to be the oil major’s Achilles Heel?
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...
BP says to Cancun: Invest in the tar sands
Timing, as I have pointed out in this blog before, is everything. Day two of the Cancun climate summit and you would have thought that politicians and companies would be tripping over themselves to portray themselves as clean and green....
Shell to Increase North American Output by 40 Percent
BP might be America’s bette noir right now after the Deepwater Horizon spill, but its fierce rival Shell is planning a massive expansion in the region. Shell plans to expand its operations in tar sands and in deepwater in the...
Obama’s War Machine Goes Green
On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, a report from Oil Change International, entitled A Climate of War, analysed both the greenhouse gas emissions of the war and the costs involved in fighting that war rather than climate change....
100 Days That Changed the Industry .. Or Did it?
So we are 100 days into this disaster and what has changed? Well we have a new CEO of BP. The straight talking American Bob Dudley argues that the Gulf of Mexico spill has been "wake-up call not only for...