Deepwater oil and gas exploration off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast is now slated to be resumed by Royal Dutch Shell after a fairly long pause, the company’s Executive Vice President Sami Iskander was quoted recently as saying at a press conference on the matter. Owing to faltering oil production and rising energy imports, the government of
Oil giant Shell has stepped up its investment in renewable energy, announcing this week that it has entered into an agreement to acquire a 43.83% stake in leading US solar developer, owner, and operator Silicon Ranch Corporation, a deal set to be worth up to $217 million.
Reprinted from our sister publication, CleanTechnica. Not upstaging, but as an important adjunct to the UN’s ADP negotiations that started today in Bonn, Germany, the one-day Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience took place in Anchorage, Alaska. Otherwise known as the GLACIER summit, the talks proceeded on two parallel
LEGO is awesome. Kids and adults have been using the iconic interlocking plastic building blocks to learn and create and entertain themselves for decades, and it’s hard to find anything not to like about LEGO. Except when it comes to greenwashing the image of one of the planet’s corporate parasites, Shell, which is working to
Okay, so people have seen this video about owls five million times since zefrank1 published it on YouTube last July (photo: ear of an owl). Zefrank1 owls is still one of the wackiest and most fact-filled nature specials you’ll ever see. Watch it again here! If you liked this short vid, the guy has 156
A facilities engineer for Shell is featured in the video below in order to inform us of how swell it is to work for Shell. You know, if you can just block out that whole “destroying the world” thing. Anything for a little money, eh? Truthfully, this video really stands out to me for how
Arctic methane emissions this month were recorded at historic-high levels, causing great concern among climatologists, who cite rapidly melting Arctic sea-ice and warming oceans as the main causes. As reported in the blog Arctic News, “huge amounts of methane are now escaping from the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, penetrating the sea ice, and entering the
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take forever to load.
One oil spill is too much. Three oil spills happened in the last short week, bringing horror to humans and wildlife alike. Dirty oil, at the root of this, has no moral compass. It is a style of bullying at the worst level. If the earth did not have the resources for renewable energy that its
By Patrick O’Keeffe As direct action coordinated by activist groups has proven to be an effective measure of shutting down corporate operations, governments and corporations have increasingly sought to gain information on the activities of groups engaging in such activities. This has given rise to the development of numerous corporations involved in gathering intelligence on
Shell Oil has had its eyes on the Arctic for over five years now. Hundreds of meetings and billions of dollars later, this summer was supposed to be Shell’s year to finally drill in the Arctic Ocean. Thankfully, a series of embarrassing safety setbacks have held Shell back. The announcement that the company would
This is a guest post by Dan Ritzman, Senior Campaign Representative for the Sierra Club. “We recognize that industry’s license to operate in the offshore is predicated on being able to operate in a safe, environmentally sound manner. Shell’s commitment to those basic principles is unwavering. Our Alaska Exploration Plans and Oil Spill Response Plans
Reportedly, an oil sheen has been spotted on the Gulf of Mexico near two Royal Dutch Shell oil platforms. The platforms and oil sheen are in the central Gulf of Mexico. Shell has reportedly sent a spill response vessel and has requested aircraft overflights. The oil sheen is approximately one mile wide and 10 miles
Shell is planning huge new fracking projects in South Africa now. There is historical irony here. It was the Dutch who, three centuries ago, were the first large-scale commercial European settlers in South Africa. Around 1600, the Dutch East India Company began the European settlements
This month marks the 23rd anniversary of the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. When the Valdez ran aground, more than 11 million gallons of oil gushed out into the fragile eco-system of the sound and onto the nearby beaches. The oil covered 1,300 miles of coastline and 11,000 square miles
I just reported yesterday that BP’s profits doubled in the 3rd quarter of this year. Now, news is Shell’s have as well. Those poor oil companies. They are getting hit so hard by the economic hardship of the US and the EU. And, for some reason, in the midst of their struggles, people are pushing for
On September 19 President Barack Obama announced his plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, including raising $1.5 trillion by closing special interest loopholes and other revenue raisers. This includes eliminating $41 billion in tax loopholes for the oil and gas industry (p. 63) over the next decade.
Good (or crazy) environmental politics stories from the past week or so.
Well, Russia is one key actor threating grey whales with extinction, but it has also taken a step forward in protecting the critically endangered species. “Companies seeking oil extraction rights to a newly available concession off Russia’s Sakhalin Island will not be permitted to conduct activities while Western gray whales are present,” WWF wrote last week.
Continuing on with our series on 350.org’s The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Doesn’t Speak for Me campaign, let’s take a quick look at some ties between the Chamber and the oil industry.
As you may have heard, and 350.org recently noted, large oil companies are having a ball, raking in billions and billions of dollars in profit (that’s right, not revenue but profit) while the U.S. economy suffers:
“Exxon Mobil nabbed $10.7bn; Shell pulled in $6.9bn; Chevron, $4.5bn; and last but not least, BP, after accounting for oil spill losses still made out with $7.1bn.”
Here’s some of the biggest global warming and environmental politics news and commentary from the last week or so, along with some fun cartoons. Rocket Fuel in Our Water? The inspiration for the cartoon above, among other things: information that there is rocket fuel (or a component of it) in water supplies across the U.S.
“Shell announced that they’ve cancelled their plans to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic in 2011 due to lack of confidence that they would meet the standards to get the required permits,” Oceana (and plenty of others) enthusiastically reported yesterday. Of course, there is no known method of successfully cleaning up oil spills in the
The Sakhalin Energy Investment Company which is part owned by Shell has announced plans to build a third major oil platform in the centre of crucial feeding grounds for the North Pacific grey whale, in the Russian Far East. Considering that Sakhalin already have two major oil platforms in the vicinity and that the North
[social_buttons] We can’t expect much from the oil industry, but Greenpeace’s newest finding is as ugly as it gets.
Score one for the environment – at least temporarily. Shell Oil announced that it will not be drilling off the Alaskan coast in the Beaufort Sea in 2009 as planned. This decision comes after a November court ruling which determined that Shell had erroneously been given permission to drill without properly assessing the environmental impact
