Oil Companies // Current

"Houston we have a problem" Official Selection for the Austin Film Festival

Houston We Have A Problem is about America's voracious appetite for oil from the... more

Houstonproblem
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Hot Docs 2009 Trailers: BLACK WAVE

"In the early hours of March 24th 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker runs aground... more

lookatmypix
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1 month ago
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Bush Interior Secretary Gale Norton Under Investigation

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A.... more

ampersand
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2 months ago
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Peak Oil Again...

ah, but what the hell does a guy like Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian... more

plusaf
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3 months ago
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Indigenous Tribes: 'We are fighting for our lives and our dignity'

Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are battling to defend their lands – often paying the ultimate price.

It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.

In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in 20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.

In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".

"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."

Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.

Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.

A massive military force continued this week to raid communities opposed to oil companies' presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90% of Nigeria's foreign earnings, has always been volatile, but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated. In the last month a military taskforce has been sent in and helicopter gunships have shelled villages suspected of harbouring militia. Thousands of people have fled. Activists from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have responded by killing 12 soldiers and this week set fire to a Chevron oil facility. Yesterday seven more civilians were shot by the military.

The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7m to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995.

Meanwhile in West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world's largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the last few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.

"An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.

...full article at linkAcross the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous... more

animalia_libero
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3 months ago
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Dead Sea Scrolls and a 1915 Holocaust

Robert Fisk, my number one favourite award winning journalist and author tells us :... more

Highr0ller
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5 months ago
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3 comments

Saudi Arabia behind the facade

Saudi Arabia is in crisis. The secretive desert kingdom is being wracked by terrorist... more

Highr0ller
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5 months ago
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18 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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A Must See : > "Fuel" the movie!

EYE OPENING! Just saw it last night at Monterey, California's restored Golden State... more

VoyagerFilms
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5 months ago
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When Chevron Hires Ex-Reporter to Investigate Pollution, Chevron Looks Good

What did Chevron do when it learned that “60 Minutes” was preparing a potentially... more

slarabee
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7 months ago
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Shell takes advice of Inventor nitrogen enriching their fuel

It took an inventor / innovator (me) to shift Shell into gear with their new "Nitrogen... more

VoyagerFilms
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8 months ago
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37 comments

Chevron's dirty tricks, extortion ol' school style

they have done it before, like in 1999... and they will try to do it again. The oil... more

LucienRafagas
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10 months ago
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WTF is going on? Is Chevron just evil?

Chevron, which posted a record profit of $23.8 billion in 2008 is suing a group of... more

LucienRafagas
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10 months ago
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LA artist steps on the gas (companies)

Truth in advertising: A public art campaign in Los Angeles that lampoons oil companies... more

GrandKnow2
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1 year ago
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15 comments

Two high-ranking McCain campaign officials lobbied for companies at center of sex-for-oil scandal

Here's something that could complicate the McCain-Palin reform message a bit: It turns out that McCain's national finance co-chair, Wayne Berman, is a paid lobbyist, and has been one for years, for two of the oil companies that are at the center of the sex, drugs and oil scandal enveloping the Interior Department.

One of McCain's high-ranking campaign officials also lobbied for the companies for years -- during time periods when the scandal has unfolded -- up until he joined the McCain campaign in the spring.

The lobbyists themselves aren't tied to the scandal in any way, and their activity on the companies' behalf doesn't implicate McCain, either. But it's legit to ask why it is that a campaign that proclaims that it's about reform is taking advice and/or money from lobbyists who were getting paid by companies involved in the scandal, one of whom is still collecting money from them.

Berman, who's McCain's national finance co-chair and one of the Arizona Senator's leading bundlers, is a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations, which has been paid millions of dollars for lobbying by the Chevron and Hess corporations, according to disclosure forms. The second official, John Green, who is McCain's chief liaison to Congress, also was with Ogilvy and worked on those same contracts until joining the campaign.

Chevron and Hess are involved in what is arguably the most sordid scandal in Washington right now.

The short version is as follows: Employees at a number of leading energy companies allegedly gave improper gifts -- including sports tickets, ski trips, illegal drugs and even sexual relations -- to federal officials in charge of a program that oversees a program by which the companies can pay for use of public lands with free energy instead of cash, saving them money.

The office of the Interior Department's inspector General launched a probe in 2006, and this week, it released a report finding that energy company officials serially and flagrantly violated gift rules and went so far as to give drugs and sex to government officials, and the government officials in turn gave contracts to favored companies.

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Click on the link for the full story and for in-text links.Here's something that could complicate the McCain-Palin reform message a bit: It turns... more