Out with the old. In with the new. When BP ceremoniously dumped bumbling gaffe-prone Tony Hayward after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and ushered in smooth-talking Bob Dudley, it was meant to herald a new era in the troubled giant’s...
California's Proposition 26 would increase the legislative vote requirement from a majority to two-thirds for new and increased state and local fees and charges. Many of California's environmental protection programs are funded with such fees. Opponents of Prop 26 say...
In the days after the BP oil spill, many environmentalists argued that the spill would be a “game-changer”, that it would facilitate the transition to a clean energy future. But any new legislation that might have been introduced after the...
If the oil industry is about one thing and one thing only it is not really about oil, it is about risk. How a company manages the geological, technical, safety and financial risk of its daily decisions determines whether the...
Obama’s presidential Commission into the oil spill starts today and already the focus seems to be about how to improve safety offshore for future drilling in light of the BP disaster. That means the focus is how to drill offshore...
Well we always knew that the oil spill disaster would have severe repercussions for the industry, a fact now conceded by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA has warned that the spill from BP’s Macondo's well "places the ability...
Firstly pollution in Brazil: At the end of last week a Brazilian court fined the local units of Shell and BASF a total of BRL1.1 billion ($654 million) in compensation and medical costs to workers who were harmed by contamination...
If a tobacco company gave the World Health Organisation a $10 million grant to examine the health effects of smoking, health campaigners would be outraged. They would also treat the results with great suspicion. And the fact that Shell gave...
When the Deepwater disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico four months ago, many commentators argued that this was a “game changer” that would change the energy debate forever. Politicians and the public would realise that the ecological and social...
“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” is the question, baby-faced BP CEO Tony Hayward apparently asked his stunned fellow BP executives as they saw billions wiped off the company’s share price due to the Gulf of Mexico...
