Skip to content

BP

BP Dropped By National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery has announced the end of its partnership with BP, becoming the latest institution from the world of art and culture to distance itself from the oil giant. The Royal Shakespeare Company and Tate have already ended sponsorship deals with BP following environmental campaigns launched by artists and employees. BP has been the main sponsor of the National Portrait Gallery’s annual portrait award since 1989 when it took over from tobacco company John Player & Sons. Portraiture The prize did not take place this year or last year while the gallery’s central London building is closed for redevelopment. In a joint statement, the gallery and BP confirmed they would not be renewing their current partnership when its contract ends in December.

Extinction Rebellion Tots Take Down BP

London - Children and families have held a die-in at the Science Museum in an Extinction Rebellion protest against air pollution. Protesters, including children as young as two, staged the peaceful demonstration at the Making The Modern World gallery in the central London museum on Thursday morning. The group lay on the floor for 20 minutes wearing bespoke gas masks reading Enough Is Enough On Air Pollution on and holding signs referencing the impact on children's health including poor lung development. Other signs quoted the government's figures on air pollution in London, which found there are around 9,400 excess deaths in the capital due to long term exposure to particulates and harmful gasses.

BP Headquarters Blocked By Greenpeace

Greenpeace members have blocked BP's headquarters with solar panels and oil barrels to mark the first day of the oil giant's new chief executive. More than a hundred environmental activists took 500 solar panels to the central London building at 3am today (Wednesday) as Bernard Looney prepared to take up his new role.

‘Crude Truth’ Protest At National Portrait Gallery BP Awards Exhibition.

The final day of the BP Portrait Awards exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery was interrupted by protesters from various campaign groups working together to highlight BP’s part in the exploitation and repression of frontline communities, especially in the Global South, as well as its role in the climate and ecological crisis. The National Portrait Gallery flaunts its 30 year relationship with BP, but recently the RSC announced that it was ending its association with BP, and the National Gallery has also jettisoned Shell...

School Strikers Threaten To Boycott RSC Over BP Sponsorship

Today, school strikers from twelve cities, towns and regions will send a letter to the Royal Shakespeare Company calling on it to immediately drop BP. The oil giant currently sponsors the theatre company’s £5 ticket scheme for 16-25-year-olds, but following the record-breaking protests last Friday, the school strike movement is turning its attention to the way in which BP is targeting their age-group directly through arts sponsorship.

How Big Oil Blocked The Nation’s Greenest Governor On Climate Change

It was Valentine's Day 2018, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee was about to be jilted. Few outside Inslee's circle of advisers knew that one of the nation's most ardent advocates of climate action had been working for weeks to forge an alliance with one of the state's leading greenhouse gas polluters—the oil giant BP. Now, on the day before a key hearing for Inslee's proposal to enact the nation's first carbon tax, the kind of comprehensive climate plan he had been talking about since taking office, BP was evasive.

BP Portrait Award Protests

Entrances to National Portrait Gallery blocked by performance activists, preventing guests from entering the gallery. A group of thirty artists, performers and activists arrived at the National Portrait Gallery to disrupt the announcement ceremony of the BP Portrait Award this week. While some of the group linked arms in doorways and chained themselves to gates to prevent party guests from entering the building, others handed out a fake awards programme that challenged BP’s long-standing sponsorship of the award.

Greenpeace Activists Halt BP’s North Sea Oil Rig

June 9 (Reuters) - Greenpeace activists said on Sunday they halted the progress of an oil rig destined for BP Plc's North Sea exploration programme off the coast of Scotland. The activists demanded that one of the world's biggest energy companies immediately end drilling new wells and invest only in renewable energy or shut its operations and return cash to investors. Greenpeace said in a statement that a team of activists in boats drew up besides the 27,000-tonne rig as it was trying to leave Cromarty Firth.

BP And Big Oil Drive Society Over The “Climate Cliff”

At the end of July, as the American wildfires began to take hold in California, British oil giant BP made its biggest financial deal in nearly twenty years. In retrospect it would have been hugely symbolic if one of the largest oil companies in the world, BP, which had so badly devastated the Gulf of Mexico eight years earlier with the Deepwater Horizon spill, had taken this moment to say it was investing in renewables. All you had to do was look at the flames burning – and listen to the experts saying this was climate change in action –  to know that urgent action was needed. But BP did not do that. As Reuters reported, BP agreed to buy U.S. “shale oil and gas assets from global miner BHP Billiton for $10.5 billion, expanding the British oil major’s footprint in some of the nation’s most productive oil basins”. That’s a whopping $10 billion invested in more climate failure.

Mi’kmaq Chiefs Voice Concern Over BP Drilling Off Nova Scotia Coast

HALIFAX—First Nations and environmental activists say they’re “extremely concerned” after drilling fluids were spilled off the coast of Nova Scotia during a BP Canada oil exploration project. The incident came just two months after the province’s offshore petroleum regulator granted the energy giant permission to drill the Aspy D-11 exploration well approximately 330 kilometres off the coast of Halifax. In a release issued Saturday, the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq Chiefs said the incident raises questions about the protection of the lands and waters, as well as any potential species affected by the spill. “We want answers from BP Canada,” said Chief Terrance Paul, Fisheries Lead for the assembly.

Security Firm Guarding Dakota Access Pipeline Used Psychological Warfare Tactics

By Steve Horn for Desmog - G4S, a company hiring security staff to guard the hotly contested Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), also works to guard oil and gas industry assets in war-torn Iraq, and has come under fire by the United Nations for human rights abuses allegedly committed while overseeing a BP pipeline in Colombia and elsewhere while on other assignments. Recently, the UK-based G4S placed job advertisements on its website, announcing it would be hiring security teams to work out of offices in Mandan and Bismarck, North Dakota.

Activists Say Regulators Going Too Easy On Chicago-Area BP Refinery

By Kari Lydersen for Midwest Energy News - In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced proposed fines to be levied against BP in the wake of a March 24, 2014 oil spill into Lake Michigan from its refinery in Whiting, Indiana that sparked a larger investigation by federal regulators. But in public comments filed July 12, local residents and environmental activists are saying the fines BP and the EPA agreed upon are not enough; “less than a drop in the bucket for BP,” as activist Patricia Walter put it.

BP To End Tate Sponsorship After 26 Years

By Nadia Khomami for The Guardian - BP is to end its 26-year sponsorship of the Tate next year. The oil firm blamed the “extremely challenging business environment” rather than years of protest against the sponsorship, the Independent reported. Last summer protesters spent 25 hours scrawling climate change messages in charcoal on the floor of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. In November activists occupied part of Tate Britain, where they started to tattoo each other with the numbers of the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in the year they were born.

BP Found “Grossly Negligent” In Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

BP is guilty of gross negligence for its role in the disastrous 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal judge ruled this morning. The company may be forced to pay up to $18 billion in penalties, according to Bloomberg News. At least 80 percent of these fines will be funneled directly into environmental restoration, per the Restore Act, says Brian Moore, Audubon's legislative director. "It changes altogether the scope of the restoration of the Gulf," Moore says. The explosion and resulting spill killed 11 people and caused immeasurable environmental damage, including killing thousands of birds. Leaked oil is still hurting birds in the area years after the 2010 disaster. In 2012 BP accepted criminal responsibility for the disaster, and the company has already paid fines and restitution totaling $4.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Following the announcement of the additional fines from the gross negligence decision this morning, BP shares fell more than 6 percent. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier held the trial without a jury, and did not rule on how much oil was ultimately spilled in months after the rig explosion. That figure will ultimately determine the eventual fine BP pays--the Clean Water Act dictates that $4,300 is paid per barrel of oil spilled. The company is expected to appeal the decision, which could delay payment on the fines for years.

Man Arrested, Vikings Invade British Museum

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org Around 200 people – many dressed as Vikings – create mobile longship in Great Court of Museum in vocal performance protest Today, hundreds of people invaded the British Museum to stage a Viking “flash-horde”, complete with a 15-metre longship. The performance was organized by theatrical protest group “BP or nor BP?” in protest at BP’s sponsorship of the Museum’s popular Vikings exhibition. Around 200 people, many of them dressed as Vikings, gathered in the Great Court of the Museum at 3.15pm. Several actors were prevented from entering the building by security, but the vast majority of participants entered without a problem, despite bag searches by security leading to long queues outside the Museum. One man, who was carrying a cardboard Viking shield painted with a large BP logo, had his shield confiscated by security guards outside the Museum. Several witnesses describe how he handed the shield over calmly, but was then approached by several police officers who told him he was breaching the peace. He asked, calmly, what exactly he was doing to breach the peace; he was simply standing quietly in a queue. Two officers then grabbed him, pushed him against a wall and arrested him without explaining exactly what offence he had allegedly committed. An observer asked the arresting officer to give his name, but the officer refused. One witness described the event as “clearly an unlawful arrest”. The man was held for a few hours and released without charge. The group have held a large number of theatrical protests in the past, including six at the British Museum. None have ever resulted in arrests before.
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.