Posted by bex -
7 December 2011 at 12:45pm -
3 Comments
The small Alaskan community of Point Hope - or Tikiġaq, as the Iñupiaq people call their homeland - is one of the oldest continually occupied sites in North America.
UN confirmed that Shell's oil spills could take 30 years to clean up
A guest blog from Ben Amunwa, campaigner with oil industry watchdog Platform
This time last year I was standing in a vast pool of oily water. It used to be a fish pond for local villagers, but now everywhere was coated with oil and the stench of petroleum was overpowering. A light rain was falling.
We were there too and thought the chat did little to dispel the company’s growing reputation as a walking PR disaster. Whilst Shell boasted of having responded to over 80 questions, unfortunately their answers bore little relation to the questions being asked.
This was an hour long master class in obfuscation and evasion.
North Sea drilling platform Neddrill 7, co-chartered by Shell and Esso (1991)
Shell
has apologised for the
North Sea oil spill
and for its
own lack
of transparency saying: "The
fact is something has gone wrong here, so whatever risk assessment we
made about the condition of these pipes has proven to be wrong."
Te Whanau a Apanui fishing vessel and a Greenpeace inflatable take action against deep sea oil prospecting in the Raukumara Basin
As global oil reserves run low, the oil giants are looking further and further afield in search of new oil. From the Arctic to the extreme deep waters of New Zealand, the oil drillers are preparing to take greater and greater risks in the search for the last drops of oil - but they've got a fight on their hands.
Shell is planning to drill for oil in the Arctic but does it have all the answers?
What does the ongoing North Sea oil spill say about Shell's plans to open up the Arctic, where an accident would be all but impossible to clean up? Especially now the existence of a suspected second leak at its Gannett Alpha platform has been revealed?
As I write, Shell is working to contain an oil spill off the Aberdeenshire coast that is already, reportedly, the worst spill in UK waters for over a decade.
Oil companies are taking their drills to the Arctic
How much oil lies under that Arctic ice? 90 billion barrels, according to the US Geological Survey.
But, how much really is that? If you ask an oil company, that’s a huge amount. With a
barrel of oil over the hundred dollar mark, that's nine
trillion dollars worth at today’s prices – if you could get at it all.
However, there’s a much more important number than the
mind-boggling figures that the oil companies deal in.
Cairn's tugs drag icebergs out the way of its Arctic oil drilling rig
Ever since last month’s Budget, oil
companies have been complaining about George Osborne’s tax on North Sea oil
and gas. Yet many have just announced record profits - boosted considerably by current sky-high oil prices. What do they take us for?
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