BP // Current

YouTube - Greenwash of the Week: BP tars itself

RAN's Brihannala Morgan takes BP to task for the Alberta tar sands.

julesrs007
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2 months ago
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1 comment

Climate Camp Swoop and Protests Report

a blog report on the good and the bad of the 2009 London Climate Camp.

JasonNParkinson
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3 months ago
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2009 London Climate Camp: Swoop and Protests

Wednesday 26 August 2009 saw the 2009 Climate Camp "Swoop" on to Blackheath in South... more

JasonNParkinson
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3 months ago
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2 comments

BP Makes ‘Giant’ Oil Discovery in Gulf of Mexico

BP Plc, Europe’s second-largest oil company, reported a “giant” discovery at the... more

TravG73
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3 months ago
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11 comments

Fortune Global 500: 2009

Here are the top five: 1. Royal Dutch Shell 2. Exxon Mobil 3. Wal-Mart Stores 4.... more

islek
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5 months ago
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4 comments

BP, British Petrol to shut down solar& wind, goes back to petrol, why ?

BP Solar was known in the World of Solar Panels. The British oil company changed it's... more

Solarlife
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5 months ago
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1 comment

Ten people killed after helicopter ditched in sea

A helicopter carrying 14 people and two crew members, was ditched in the North Sea... more

smurph25
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8 months ago
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BP to pay almost $180 million in pollution case

BP has agreed to pay almost $180 million to settle a pollution case with the... more

leahl
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9 months ago
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6 comments

Gamevolution!

Molleindustria a group of Italian artist, designers and programmers who’s aim is to... more

GrandKnow2
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10 months ago
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3 comments

Is Steven Chu too chummy with BP?

This has been of concern to me as well: Oil companies spinning their reputations to... more

JanforGore
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11 months ago
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2 comments

BP reports record $10 billion profit

LONDON (Reuters) – British oil major BP Plc (BP.L) may have marked the oil... more

bansheewail
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1 year ago
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67 comments

BP earns record profits of £6.4bn

Oil giant BP has soared to mammoth profits of 10 billion US dollars (£6.4bn) as the... more

Beta_Boy
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1 year ago
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4 comments

In Biggest Oil Sale Ever, Iraqi Government to Put 40 Billion Barrels of Reserves Up For Grabs

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are being given access to eight oil fields, which represent... more

goldenways
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1 year ago
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1 comment

100 companies no environmentalist should ever support

If you're worried about environmental issues, take a look at this list of offenders... more

sunnyspeaks
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1 year ago
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32 comments

One Alaskan asks: what is McCain thinking?

Is this a joke?; That seemed to be the question du jour when my phone started ringing... more

Pericles_Lewnes
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1 year ago
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45 comments

Oil prices trading higher as Gustav spins toward Gulf of Mexico, threatens oil platforms

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices rose for a third day Wednesday as Tropical Storm Gustav... more

MyStoryOurWorld
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1 year ago
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Australian, U.S. Scientists Copy Nature to Produce Hydrogen

Australian and U.S. scientists said they have copied a process found in plants that... more

TravG73
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1 year ago
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Did you hear that Alaska has more oil than the Middle East?

Petroleum may be in short supply these days, but the United States does have a related surplus: myths of oil abundance.

You don't have to drill deep into our political discourse to find suspect stories about oil, with politicians peddling the flagrantly false notion that China is producing oil off the coast of Florida, while right-wing activist Jerome Corsi claims oil is not a fossil fuel but "a natural product the Earth generates constantly."

Such declarations serve a political purpose: to make oil drilling seem like an easy solution to our current energy crisis, to marginalize warnings that we are running short on oil, and to stymie efforts at conservation or developing alternatives to fossil fuels.

Along with these high-profile claims, an array of books, Internet forums and YouTube videos constitute a subterranean layer of storytelling, creating a narrative of perpetually cheap domestic oil being denied to us by a dictatorial government. These stories may be working: Offshore oil drilling is now favored by 63 percent of the electorate. But there's another side to them: They reveal our inability to accept that the United States is not always a land of plenty.

"In America, we're a frontier nation, and so the idea is that just beyond the next ridge is the perfect farmland, a giant oil field or an abundant supply of timber," says Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "People don't like the idea that the frontier is now closed and we've got to live within limits."

These narratives also require spectacularly limited scientific literacy about oil: what it is, how we find it, how much remains.

The evidence for oil's organic origins is robust and diverse. Briefly, it includes biomarkers, or chemical compounds found in both ancient organisms and petroleum formed at the same time; geochemical evidence allowing scientists to match types of oil with their source rocks; lab experiments mimicking oil formation; and literally a world of geological data helping us find oil today.

Thunder Horse, a drilling area that BP operates in the Gulf of Mexico:

Moreover, Thunder Horse also defies "fossil-fuel" oil theorists who like to argue that oil comes from dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests. With the water depth of nearly 2 miles, Thunder Horse is truly an ultra-deep project. From the floor of the Gulf, BP has drilled down another 6 miles to hit oil. What evidence is there that any ancient dinosaur ever walked on land that is now 8 miles down? Moreover, geologists identify the deposits in which BP has found oil in the Thunder Horse Field as Miocene, a period that occurred in the Cenozoic Era, some 24,000 years ago. Dinosaurs by then were long gone, having disappeared at the end of the Mesozoic Era, some 65 million years ago.

Corsi makes multiple scientific mistakes here. Scientists never argue that oil comes from "dead dinosaurs and decaying ancient forests." Again, oil derives from fossilized marine microorganisms. The Miocene was not a point in time "24,000 years ago." It lasted from about 5 million years ago to 23 million years ago. In geological language, it's an epoch, not a period, and according to BP, the rocks at Thunder Horse appear to be 5 to 11 million years old. Moreover, oil tends to seep upward over time, so we typically extract it from rocks that are younger than those in which it was formed anyway.

Finally, while dinosaur references are irrelevant to oil, basic geological concepts -- erosion, plate tectonics -- explain how any creature might walk on land that later becomes deeply submerged. The National Research Council suggests students should know these concepts by the eighth grade.

Petroleum may be in short supply these days, but the United States does have a related... more