The FBI is investigating whether Alaska political appointees improperly punished state regulators who tried to enforce environmental rules against oil companies operating in Alaska. The inquiry is connected to an ongoing criminal investigation of BP for allowing pipelines it operates...
Vermont is famous for its maple trees. But for how much longer? Climate change is pushing the North American maple zone gradually but inexorably northwards towards Canada. According to Rupert Cornwell in the Independent, one day soon the maple may...
The bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos, whose former owner Mikhail Khordorkovsky languishes in a Siberian prison, is to be sold off next month in the first in a series of “bargain basement” auctions. Russian bankruptcy officials have confirmed that the...
A BP employee has admitted destroying documents after plaintiffs' lawyers subpoenaed her laptop on an anonymous tip that she had information useful in the lawsuits against the UK oil company arising from its fatal refinery explosion, reports the Financial Times....
The Iraqi Cabinet approved the highly controversial draft oil law yesterday, despite international condemnation that its gives huge control to multinational oil companies. The Iraqi Parliament will take up the measure when it reconvenes early next month after a recess....
Even more trouble for the oil majors. Venezuela’s President Chavez has announced a new law that nationalizes the last remaining oil production sites that are under foreign company control. The nationalizations, which affect oil production in the heavy fuel Orinoco...
Shell plans to launch a new fuel made from wood chips and straw later this year from a pilot plant developed by Shell and Choren Industries, the German biofuel company. The synthetic diesel, made using a novel biomass-to-liquids (BTL) process,...
Ok, I know we have written about Blair’s hypocrisy on climate before, but it’s once again there for all to see. In the run up to the Brussels summit later this week, Blair has called on fellow European leaders “to...
Oh yeah? Don't believe a word of it. You may have thought the long debate over whether humans are warming the Earth was finally over, especially given the recent warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But today Channel...
The British Government has denied claims it intervened to influence the shaping of Iraq's controversial oil law, which pretty much everyone but the American and British government believes will hand over control of the country's oil supply to foreign multinationals....
