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....
The “Great Global Warming Swindle” that showed on Channel Four in the UK last week and tried to argue that carbon dioxide emissions are not to blame for global warming, is it turns out, just a swindle. One of the...
Talking about the changing face of the oil industry, this is a really interesting article by Carola Hoyos in today’s Financial Times about the new “Seven Sisters”, the most powerful global oil companies. Writes Hoyos: “As oil prices have trebled...
BP has had to deny that a series of stinging criticisms of the company's management, culture and cost-cutting by a senior executive were an attack on Lord Browne. Tony Hayward, chief executive for exploration and production worldwide, has whipped up...
The Dublin-based company Island Oil & Gas has announced an onshore oil exploration deal in "occupied" Western Sahara that it has signed with the Moroccan Government. The deal is hugely controversial as NGOs argue that it could break international law....
