Skip to content

Oil and Gas

What Abandoning Fossil Fuels Could Look Like In The Arab World

December 24, 2023 Lylla Younes, DeSmog. , , , , ,
For the second year in a row, world leaders met in the Arab world to negotiate the future of the planet. As a backdrop to the United Nations climate conference in Dubai, it’s a fitting venue for a planet-wide shift that scientists say needs to happen: The region has extensive deposits of oil and gas, but also immense, untapped potential for renewable energy. Over the past several years, European governments and corporations have made moves to capitalize off this potential, investing in sprawling mega-projects to capture the sun’s energy from the region’s vast deserts and export the electricity north.

US Troops Are Occupying Syria’s Oil Fields; Congress Rejects Withdrawl

December 12, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , ,
The US military has occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. A top Pentagon official has acknowledged that Washington’s strategy is to starve Syria’s central government of revenue it needs to rebuild, after a decade of war fueled by foreign powers devastated the country. Former US President Donald Trump boasted in 2020: “They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil”.

Reuters, New York Times Top List Of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers

December 5, 2023 Amy Westervelt, Matthew Green and Joey Grostern, DeSmog. , , , , ,
Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon, celebrates the potential of carbon capture to dramatically reduce global emissions. According to Saudi Aramco’s podcast, the fossil fuel industry is innovating new climate solutions, and BP’s podcast proclaims more of the same. These messages sound like they’ve been pulled from the public-relations departments of the world’s largest oil companies, but they were produced and promoted by the in-house ad agencies of Bloomberg, Reuters, and The New York Times, respectively, and in the process benefited from the credibility those media brands have built with readers over the decades as trustworthy sources of news.

Cops Arrest 667 Just Stop Oil Activists Since 30 October

December 3, 2023 The Canary. , , , ,
Just Stop Oil students and other supporters marched from New Scotland Yard in solidarity with political prisoners remanded for slow marching in recent weeks. They are calling for political prisoners being held for nonviolent climate protest to be freed, and for the climate criminals responsible for new oil and gas to be charged with genocide. At 12pm on Saturday 2 December, a crowd of around 80 Just Stop Oil supporters gathered at New Scotland Yard, where they heard testimonies from young political prisoners who have been imprisoned for demanding that the government take basic steps to protect the population by ending new oil and gas.

Oil And Gas Production Set To Escalate Under Landmark US Climate Law

November 24, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. , , ,
A new report warns that oil and gas production in the United States is expected to rise under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), even as the legislation helps to moderately lower fossil fuel demand through billions of dollars in clean energy investments. The report, “Biden’s Fossil Fuel Fail: How U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Rises under the Inflation Reduction Act, Exacerbating Environmental Injustice,” details how, despite the IRA’s significant spending on renewable energy, electric vehicles, and batteries, the policy will not be enough for the U.S. to meet its 2030 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 to 52 percent  below 2005 levels.   

Fossil Fuel Companies Made Bold Promises To Capture Carbon

September 28, 2023 Michael Buchsbaum and Edward Donnelly, DeSmog. , , , ,
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) was high on the agenda at New York Climate Week last week, where critics of the technology raised concerns it would be used to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry. For years, experts have pointed out that CCS has been primarily used to pump more oil out of the earth, using a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Burning that oil emits far more carbon dioxide (CO2) than what is captured, and therefore CCS doesn’t represent a viable solution to tackle climate change, critics argue. At a news conference after the one-day UN Climate Ambition Summit on September 20, Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, said: “The oil companies acknowledged this year that they will not meet their bogus net zero commitments.

Oil Lobby Claims More Production Won’t Raise Emissions

September 25, 2023 Taylor Noakes, DeSmog. , , ,
It is a well established fact that increasing oil production leads to increased emissions, and that major reductions in oil production and consumption are necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Despite the scientific consensus supporting this fact, a recent news release from a Canadian oil industry lobby group made the remarkable claim that Canadian oil production increased over the past decade while emissions decreased. The analysis note issued by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) was widely circulated in a Canadian Press wire story published on August 31 under the title “Oil and gas sector says new data shows it can both hike output and lower emissions.”

Tens Of Thousands Take The Streets In New York City

September 18, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , , , , ,
Tens of thousands poured into the streets of New York City on Sunday for the largest climate mobilization in the U.S. in years, with organizers and marchers telling President Joe Biden to stop approving planet-wrecking fossil fuel projects and start doing everything in his power to accelerate the nation's renewable energy transition. Campaigners expressed outrage that Biden has refused to declare a national climate emergency and is planning to skip United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. "It's unbelievable that Biden is sitting on the sidelines when he's got more power than anyone on Earth to end deadly fossil fuels," said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

After A Century, Oil And Gas Problems Persist On Navajo Lands

September 10, 2023 Jerry Redfern, Scheer Post. , , ,
It’s a Saturday morning in late June and Garry Jay, a member of the Navajo Nation, pilots a white crew-cab Chevy pickup on a lumpy dirt road across the grasslands north of his house in Shiprock, New Mexico, heading for the round, wood-framed hogan his grandfather built by hand in the 1970s. His route weaves 20 miles among the hundreds of oil wells that dot Horseshoe Canyon as he chases the bittersweet memories of childhood weekends and summers 40 years ago in that house, on that land, with his grandparents. The family’s former winter sheep ranch sits at the base of a sharp cliff, five miles south of the Colorado border.

The Pentagon Is The Elephant In The Climate Activist Room

September 10, 2023 Melissa Garriga and Tim Biondo, Peace and Planet News. , , ,
With nearly 10,000 people expected to take to the streets of New York City on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels, the climate justice movement seems more organized than ever. But, there’s a big elephant in the room, and it has the Pentagon written all over it. The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations combined and accounts for about one-third of America’s total fossil fuel consumption. The Department of Defense (DoD) also uses huge amounts of natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear power plants at its bases around the country.

Sanctions Failing: EU Imports More Russian Gas, China Beats US Tech War

September 9, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , ,
Western sanctions are backfiring: The European Union is now importing Russian liquified natural gas at record levels, and China has made high-tech breakthroughs despite US export restrictions. Washington’s and Brussels’ economic warfare is, ironically, strengthening the economic sovereignty of Beijing and Moscow while blowing back on Europe. The world is living through a new cold war: Cold War Two. And one of the main ways in which this war has been waged is through economic means. Sanctions are the principal instrument of economic warfare. When they are imposed unilaterally by a country, without the support of the United Nations, they are referred to as “unilateral coercive measures” and are illegal according to international law.

Blackfeet Nation Statement On Badger-Two Medicine Court Settlement

September 2, 2023 Patrick Armstrong, Jr., Last Real Indians. , , ,
Browning, Montana - The Blackfeet Nation has, since time immemorial, remained committed to protecting our sacred cultural lands in the Badger-Two Medicine. This area has forever been Blackfeet traditional territory, a place of refuge for our People. For decades, we have opposed plans to industrialize our cultural homeland. We want to acknowledge our many Blackfeet elders at the forefront of this struggle, who no longer are with us and who did not live to see the Badger-Two Medicine protected from development. We are grateful for their leadership. After these many years of struggle, our People are relieved that agreement finally has been reached between the U.S. government, tribal and conservation partner organizations, and the leaseholder—Solenex, LLC—to retire the last Badger-Two Medicine oil and gas lease.

Two Degrees Of Warming Could Cause One Billion Deaths Over Next Century

August 31, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans. Many of the most powerful and profitable businesses on the planet are part of the oil and gas industry, which is both indirectly and directly responsible for over 40 percent of carbon emissions, which impact billions of lives in some of the world’s most remote communities that have the least resources, reported Western News.

Portland City Government Privately Compromised With Oil Industry

August 27, 2023 Nick Cunningham, DeSmog. , , , ,
In the summer of 2022, it seemed that the days of an oil-by-rail facility in Portland, Oregon, were numbered. The previous year, the city had rejected a land use permit for a company called Zenith Energy, which receives crude oil shipped by rail from as far away as North Dakota. Zenith had appealed the decision, but had already suffered a string of defeats in the state.  Climate activists and community associations, who were concerned about the risks associated with oil-by-rail shipments, counted the city’s rejection of the permit as a major victory, and were tantalizingly close to prevailing over the company.

How Washington State Can Protect Workers At Oil Refineries

August 22, 2023 Tom Conway, Nation Of Change. , , ,
The grief hits Scott Campbell like a ton of bricks every time he walks into the union hall and sees the memorial to the fallen workers. Seven members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union reported for their shifts at the former Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington, on April 2, 2010, and never drove back out. They perished when a decades-old, structurally deficient piece of equipment called a heat exchanger exploded and caught fire in one of the worst industrial incidents in state history. Campbell and other members of USW Local 12-591 pay tribute to the seven with a laser focus on safety at the refinery, currently owned by Marathon.
«12345678910»