Skip to content

Oil and Gas

Baltimore Lawsuit Alleges Shale Investments Fueled Price Fixing Scheme

August 27, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
The city of Baltimore filed a class action lawsuit on Saturday, alleging that major U.S. shale drillers colluded to fix oil prices, the latest in a series of lawsuits filed this year claiming that U.S. oil producers conspired with each other and with OPEC to drive oil prices up. The new lawsuit, filed by the mayor of Baltimore and its city council, is notable in part because it alleges Wall Street investment firms played a role by pressuring shale drillers to coordinate their output to prevent fueling price wars with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other oil producers abroad. Wall Street companies were among the largest investors in multiple competing shale producers at the same time — and pushed them all to engage in “capital discipline,” the lawsuit alleges.

Judge Orders Increased Protection Of Marine Species From Oil Drilling

August 22, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
At the urging of Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other green groups, a United States federal judge has thrown out a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assessment governing how threatened and endangered marine species like whales and sea turtles ought to be protected from oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Maryland district court struck down the assessment — known under the Endangered Species Act as a “biological opinion” — which was required to ensure that endangered and threatened species would not be jeopardized by exploration and drilling for fossil fuels in the Gulf, a press release from Sierra Club said.

Fire Reveals How Oil Industry Environmental ‘Solution’ Spurs Climate Crisis

August 14, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , ,
The trouble began at Piñon Midstream’s Dark Horse Treating Plant in Jal, New Mexico, on November 25, 2023, with an unexpected loud “pop” in the early afternoon, the company would later tell state regulators. A poisonous mix of flammable gasses hissed out from a pipeline feeding into the plant. Within a minute, a worker radioed in to the plant’s control room that a dense cloud of vapor had enveloped part of the plant. Within two minutes, Dark Horse was ablaze in what the company would later call an “intense and sustained fire.” Within 15 minutes, more pipes ripped open, and a towering fireball tore through the plant.

Battle For Syria’s Oil Pits Local Tribal Forces Against US Occupation

August 9, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. , , , ,
In Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, Arab tribal forces have mounted a determined assault on the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), aiming to reclaim their lands and challenge the U.S.’s de facto control over Syria’s oil-rich regions. The U.S. responded with missile strikes, underscoring the fragile hold Washington maintains over these critical resources, which have been central to its leverage in the ongoing Syrian conflict. This escalation followed the arrest of Arab commander Abu Khawla by the SDF in August 2023 during an anti-Daesh (ISIS) operation in al-Hasakah. The arrest ignited over a month of armed clashes between Arab forces and the SDF, leading to the deaths of approximately 118 people, including ten civilians.

International Campaign Targets Tanker Supplying Israel With Texas Oil

August 6, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
An oil tanker scheduled to carry 300,000 barrels of military-grade jet fuel to Israel has been prevented from docking in Spain and Gibraltar following pressure from activists. The oil is expected to be used in Israeli Air Force’s F16 and F35 jets as part of the country’s genocidal assault on Gaza. The Overseas Santorini was supposed to dock in Gibraltar on July 30, but it did not stop and is currently traveling northeast in the Mediterranean. It’s unclear if the failure to dock was connected to the protests. Gibraltar confirmed that the vessel requested to stop and an official told the Gibraltar Chronicle that no services were supplied to the tanker.

Four Just Stop Oil Supporters Arrested By Greater Manchester Police

August 5, 2024 Just Stop Oil. , , ,
Four Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested after an operation by the Greater Manchester Police. In recent weeks Just Stop Oil has been taking nonviolent action with groups internationally to demand governments establish a Fossil Fuel Treaty, to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. [1] A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said: Just Stop Oil supporters are always fully accountable for our actions and as such the four arrested today will accept any legal consequences. Accountability is a core feature of nonviolence, which is at the centre of Just Stop Oil’s mission. We take action because we want a safe and stable society. Delivering a Fossil Fuel Treaty that ends oil and gas by 2030 is an essential step for our Government to prevent massive disorder.

NYC Protesters Target AIG Over East African Crude Oil Pipeline

July 27, 2024 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. , , , , , , ,
The "Summer of Heat" continues—both in terms of record-breaking temperatures driven by fossil fuels and a series of nonviolent direct actions targeting Wall Street for its contributions to the climate emergency. After protests last month calling out Citibank for "financing the arsonists," climate campaigners on Friday set their sights on finance and insurance giant AIG for "stubbornly" refusing to join over two dozen other insurers that won't cover the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). EACOP is set to run nearly 900 miles from Uganda's Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Rights groups have sounded the alarm about how the project has devastated the lives and livelihoods of people in its path as well as violence endured by African activists, who have been "kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to different forms of harassment."

Big Oil Rallies To Obstruct Accountability

July 20, 2024 Emily Sanders, DeSmog. , , , , , , , , , , ,
In the face of mounting scrutiny from local, state, and federal officials, fossil fuel companies and their allies are deploying a range of tactics to obstruct ongoing lawsuits and investigations concerning evidence that the industry has misled the public about the harms it knew its products would cause to the climate, environment, and human health. Far-right industry allies with ties to Chevron have mounted an “unprecedented” pressure campaign calling on the Supreme Court to stop a potentially historic climate deception lawsuit against oil majors from going to trial. Republican attorneys general are separately urging the Supreme Court to throw out similar climate fraud lawsuits from five states.

California Regulators Refuse To Enforce New Orphan Well Rules

July 18, 2024 Joe Fassler, DeSmog. , , , ,
As two of California’s largest oil and gas companies join by corporate merger, state regulators are declining to apply tough new rules governing the transfer of defunct oil and gas wells, DeSmog has learned. But a growing chorus of California legislators say that nonenforcement stance violates a groundbreaking law they fought to pass just months ago — and they, along with dozens of environmental groups, are demanding that regulators change course. “They’re just ignoring the statute,” Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “We need the governor to step in and tell the agency to follow the law,” she added

Activists Win Landmark Ruling Over United Kingdom Oil Well Plan

June 20, 2024 Michael Holden, Reuters. , , , ,
Planning authorities should have considered the impact of climate-warming emissions in approving an oil well near Gatwick Airport, the UK's highest court says, a ruling activists say could profoundly affect new fossil fuel projects in Britain. Environmental campaigners had argued that planning permission to retain and expand the oil well site near London's Gatwick was flawed because it had not considered the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the use of the oil. Supreme Court judges agreed by a narrow three to two majority, and quashed the planning approval which they said was unlawful.

Texas Has ‘The Most Aggressive’ Well-Plugging Program In The US

June 2, 2024 Elliot Woods, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
After a century and a half of oil and gas production in the United States, the nonprofit environmental watchdog Climate Tracker published a sobering report in 2020: Some 2.6 million unplugged onshore wells lay scattered across the country. Plugging all those derelict holes, from the rocky Appalachian hill country of western Pennsylvania to the dry plains of West Texas and the tundra of Alaska, and countless points between, might cost as much as $280 billion. And that figure from the report did not include undocumented wells — the ones that have vanished from the books, if they were ever recorded in the first place.

Landmark Study Reveals Gas Stove Emissions Boost Childhood Asthma

May 6, 2024 Diane Bernard, DeSmog. , , , , , , , ,
People who use gas or propane stoves in their homes are regularly exposed to harmful levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a new study shows. The household appliances emit pollutants that can be linked to approximately 200,000 current cases of childhood asthma, with 25 percent of those cases tied to nitrogen dioxide alone. The study, published Friday in Science Advances, represents the first time researchers have quantified the link between gas stoves and asthma from NO2 exposures inside homes. “I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University and the lead scientist on the study, said in a statement.

The Oil Crash Is Coming Sooner Than We Think

April 18, 2024 Rachel Donald, Resilience. , , ,
Oil in the North Sea is expected to be net-energy negative by 2031. This means that in 2031, it’ll cost more energy to extract the fossil fuels than we would gain by using them, rendering extraction unfeasibly expensive. Yet, rather than use our remaining years of access to these fuels to turbo-charge new energy infrastructure, fossil fuels are being extracted and burned for business as usual: quick cash. Around the world, the lights will go off in nations that don’t have back-up renewables. That’s most of them. I interviewed Alister Hamilton, Director of Zero Emissions Scotland.

Climate-Science Deniers Are Plotting Against The Clean Energy Transition

March 17, 2024 Rebecca Burns, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
Last July, a small group of rabble-rousers boarded a trio of powerboats, banners and bullhorns in hand. They were headed for the massive floating construction site of an offshore wind farm 35 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. As the boats motored through the swells, the self-styled activists broke into a chorus of pleas for the wind farm construction to cease—chants likely intended less for the still-faraway workers than for the camera there to capture footage. “Hear this message: We’re here to save the whales!” called out a man in a black polo shirt.

Report Exposes The Oil Giants ‘Fueling Israel’s War Machine’

March 15, 2024 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , , , , , , ,
A report published Thursday shows that major fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP are playing a key role in propelling Israel's devastating military assault on Gaza, facilitating the country's supply of energy that powers Israeli jets and tanks as they bomb and shell civilians. The new research, conducted by Data Desk and commissioned by the advocacy group Oil Change International, examines the sources of Israeli jet fuel and crude imports in an effort to shine light on the web of countries and corporations implicated in the war on the Gaza Strip.
«12345678910»
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.