Tag Archives: uk

Oil, art & human rights links

Posted on by
Reply

Shell sponsorship: there's something unsettling about the Shell branded baby blankets in this hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Nevertheless, corporate sponsorship and community projects cannot absolve oil companies like Shell for creating a health crisis and human rights tragedy in the Niger Delta.

EU oil companies including Shell and Total will be banned from importing and purchasing Iranian oil by new sanctions, reported Reuters. As Iran threatens to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery of global oil shipments, the UK foreign minister William Hague downplayed the likelihood of war.

Continue reading →

Climate scientists support Request Initiative’s appeal for GWPF to reveal funders

Posted on by
Reply

Below is a blog cross-posted from Request Initiative, who support charities and non-profit organisations to use freedom of information laws. This Friday, the group will ask the Information Rights Tribunal to expose the seed funder to a climate sceptic think-tank (GWPF) with suspected links to BP, Shell and other energy companies. For the original blog post, see here. Words by Brendan Montague.

Climate scientists will call on a British judge to disclose the identity of the seed funder to Lord Lawson’s climate sceptic think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Guardian reports today.

Professor James Hansen, adjunct professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute and one of the first scientists to warn of catastrophic climate change, is supporting a Freedom of Information request, saying the public interest will be served by ending the secrecy around the financing of Lord Lawson’s London based charity. Continue reading →

UK government backs risky offshore drilling

Posted on by
Reply

Despite serious environmental concerns, the heightened risk of major accidents and inadequate regulatory oversight, the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change has awarded 46 new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, including in the ecologically sensitive West of Shetlands area. Speaking to BBC News, Adam Ma’anit of Platform condemned the move:

“There is insufficient data with regards to the complexity of the marine environment in these areas…It is highly irresponsible for [the Department of Energy and Climate Change] to sign off on any concomitant oil and gas expansion in the region.” Continue reading →

An abdication of responsibility

Posted on by
Reply

When a government responds to one of the worst oil spills in its waters for a decade by appointing the former Chairman of Shell to advise on cutting regulation of the offshore oil and gas industry, something has clearly gone wrong. If the government wants to ramp up extraction from deeper waters but is unwilling to police industry standards effectively, how will catastrophic disasters be prevented in UK waters? Who will hold oil companies to account, when our government fails to do so?

The Telegraph reports:

Charles Hendry, the energy minister, promised oil executives at Aberdeen’s annual Offshore Europe conference that they would be facing less regulatory oversight in years to come.

Legal analysis: Shell Nigeria lawsuits

Posted on by
Reply

Michael D. Goldhaber is an expert on human rights law and corporate accountability in the US. In his recent article in AM Law Daily, he offers up his views on the settlement between claimants from the village of Bodo and Shell over massive oil spills caused by the company in 2008-2009.

Royal Dutch Shell has been sued so many times over its conduct in Nigeria that its cases offer a laboratory experiment for human rights litigation.

After thirteen years of arduous U.S. alien tort litigation, Wiwa v. Shell resulted in a piddling $15.5 million settlement in 2009. Kiobel v. Shell has done even worse. Nearly a decade after the case was filed, it has succeeded only in abolishing the corporate alien tort within the Second Circuit, and if the U.S. Supreme Court accepts cert, it may do the same nationwide.
Continue reading →

Oil corporations preying on Libyan oil – video with Greg Muttitt

Posted on by
Reply

“When Western powers look at the region, they talk about humanity and democracy, but they’re thinking about oil,” says Greg Muttitt, author of Fuel on the Fire, which examines oil and politics in occupied Iraq.

“The great fear is that just as they did in Iraq they’ll create a democracy that serves British interests or the West’s interests or the oil companies’ interests and does nothing for the people of Libya.”

BBC: Shell spill: what happened & why it matters to Shell

Posted on by
Reply

An in depth account of the Shell’s North Sea oil spill – the largest in a decade – and why it matters, by BBC Business News, with mention of Platform, Greenpeace & others.

Shell spill: What happened and why it matters to Shell

By Damian KahyaBusiness reporter, BBC News

Environmental groups are furious that the largest North Sea spill in a decade was not revealed to the public for three days. Why did it happen and will Shell’s recent environmental problems affect the company’s ambitious plans?

On 10 August, a routine helicopter flight over the North Sea spotted a “sheen” on the sea’s surface near Royal Dutch Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform.

The oily sheen covered just 0.5 sq km to begin with, according to figures provided to the BBC by Shell.

But it was an indication that below the surface, something was leaking.

Shell immediately informed regulatory bodies, including the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the government’s Joint Nature Conservation Commitee.

The DECC says, however, that it remained up to Shell to decide when and how to make the information public.

Continue reading here.

Channel 4 News: Shell North Sea Oil Spill

Posted on by
2

Last night’s Channel 4 News was mostly taken up with a relatively heated debate on the London riots. During the air time left over, science correspondent Tom Clarke gave an overview of Shell’s 100 tonne oil spill in the North Sea. PLATFORM provided some analysis, putting Shell’s oil spill in the context of the daily leaks, discharges and spills in the North Sea.

Shell initially claimed the spill was “under control” yesterday, but late last night Reuters Tom Bergin reported that the ruptured pipeline was continuing to leak oil into the seabed, and that the oil spill had already been ongoing 2 days before the oil giant called the authorities.

The Anglo Dutch oil major first revealed the leak late on Friday but a spokesman said on Saturday it had been detected two days earlier.

A spokeswoman for the Maritime & Coastguard Agency said it had no information on the status of the clean up operation, and that none of its staff were at the spill site.

The fact that an oil spill of as yet unknown magnitude went undetected so close to the Scottish coast line should raise alarm bells in Holyrood and amongst UK regulators (the Health and Safety Executive and Department for Energy and Climate Change).

The combination of “light-touch” regulation in an era of budget cuts, and self-reporting of pollution incidents is the perfect recipe for a major Deepwater Horizon-type accident in the UK’s backyard.

You can read more of PLATFORM’s research into the inherent risks of offshore drilling here.

Breaking: Shell Gannet Alpha oil Spill hits North Sea

Posted on by
3

From BBC News last night:

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to stop a leak at one of its North Sea oil platforms.

The leak was found near the Gannet Alpha platform, 180 km (113 miles) from Aberdeen, Scotland.

The company would not say how much oil may have been spilt so far, though it said it had “stemmed the leak significantly”.

One of the wells at the Gannet oilfield has been closed, but the company would not say if production was reduced.

The company says it has sent a clean-up vessel to the location and has a plane monitoring the surface.

The leak was found in a flow line connecting an oil well to the platform.

‘Finite amount’

Shell confirmed the leak was continuing but said it was being reduced and was “not a significant spill”.

The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change said it was in contact with Shell and investigating the incident in the usual way.

The department’s spokesman added that it understood from Shell that there was a “finite amount of oil that can be dispersed” but stressed that regulators were taking the leak seriously.

While industry and government downplay the size of the oil spill, this is only the latest in a string of pollution incidents, some major, from this oil rig. The Wall Street Journal confirmed:

The platform had 10 leak incidents in 2009 and 2010, according to an HSE document showing voluntarily declared spills.

PLATFORM’s Ben Amunwa said:

Shell has been rated as one of the worst company’s for safety in the North Sea. This latest oil spill, days after the UN issued a damning report on Shell’s sub-standard practices in Nigeria, is further evidence of serious flaws in its safety culture. Gannet Alpha, at over 18 years old, is now notoriously leaky, much like over half of the oil platforms in the UK North Sea that are now beyond their ‘design-life’. Regulators should be highly concerned about the inherent risks of offshore oil activities, ageing infrastructure and expanding operations in the UK Continental Shelf. These trends increase the risks of daily oil spills to unacceptable levels.

The BBC report also heard from Friends of the Earth Scotland:

“Any spill, however small, should serve as a warning sign and encourage us to look to a clean, renewable energy future, rather than continuing to invest in dirty oil,” said Juliet Swann, head of campaigns at the environmental group.

The field is co-owned by Esso, a subsidiary of US oil firm Exxon but operated by Shell.

PLATFORM’s report on the dire state of oil drilling in the North Sea can be accessed here.