Tag Archives | Oil

Washington has maintained control over Iraq’s oil revenues since its illegal 2003 invasion–a financial and economic subjugation that undermines Iraqi sovereignty and denies it access to its own national treasure.

The poisonous waste, and deadly carbon emissions produced by oilsands production is even worse than had been thought, and production must stop, argues John Clarke.

The U.S. military has illegally occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. The Senate voted 13-84, rejecting a resolution to withdraw U.S. troops.

Humans have an infinite capacity for wishful thinking, but a revolutionary project is by definition a recognition that wishes are for fairy tales.

As part of negotiations for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel, the United States is demanding that Riyadh keep pricing its oil in dollars, not China’s renminbi or other currencies.

In an action that is a flat reversal of his election campaign pledge of “no more drilling on federal lands,” President Joe Biden decided Monday to approve an $8 billion oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, to be operated by ConocoPhillips.

Pakistan’s acute energy crisis is the immediate backdrop against which Foreign Minister Bilawal Zardari’s forthcoming talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow today need to be understood.

British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK took part in destabilizing the nation with the 2011 military intervention.

In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.

The United States is still plundering Syrian oil, stealing the country’s resources via illegal border crossings and siphoning them out to further line its pockets.

According to an analysis by Elements Newsletter based on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022, roughly 43% of the world’s oil production came from just three countries in 2021 — the US, Saudi Arabia, and the Russian Federation. Together, these three countries produced more oil than the rest of the top 10 combined.

The unthinkable is happening for the second time in five months: Russian gas giant Gazprom writes to German gas companies announcing force majeure effective from June 14, exonerating it from any compensation for shortfalls since then. 

The devastating effects of global warming are being felt by billions of people all around the world. Meanwhile, capitalist fat cats are openly downplaying the risk of entire cities being buried beneath the rising oceans as a trifling inconvenience. Like Emperor Nero before them, the rulers of this destructive system are fiddling–this time–as Rome drowns.

After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work.

ExxonMobil responded to the US President by urging his administration to enact emergency measures.

Texaco operations in Ecuador from 1962 to 1994 dumped 70 billion litres of “wastewater”, heavily contaminated with oil and other chemicals, into the Amazon rainforest, plus over 650,000 barrels of crude oil. They polluted over 800,000 hectares.

Venezuela has doubled its oil production over the past months thanks to Iran’s help in defiance of U.S. sanctions against Caracas, oil industry analysts say.

Last month, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times. It might as well have been written by the Pentagon. Buhari promoted Brand Nigeria, auctioning the country’s military services to Western powers, telling readers that Nigeria would lead Africa’s “war on terror” in exchange for foreign infrastructure investment.

When the big shutdown finally takes hold in the Bakken, the frackers will have gone and most wells abandoned, and people in the region will still have to deal with the illegal trash dumps, polluted streams, health problems, and other unfortunate effects of the boom.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies (newly merged in 1998), signed an agreement with the government of Guyana in 1999 to develop the Stabroek block, which is off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region.