Oil Watchdog

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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The way natural gas promoters talk about their pet fuel, you’d think it was green as clover and safe as baby oil. After the deadly San Bruno, California, gas line explosion, however, hawkers like natural gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens have gone silent. No more calls to action and pleas to phone your member of [...]

Oops, there’s oil on the water after all *(or not)

Thursday, September 2, 2010

The new oil platform fire or explosion in the Gulf of Mexico looks minor in comparison to the BP spill, but there are sure some loud echoes in how it’s being handled. When word first trickled out about Thusday’s platform accident off the Louisiana coast, there were swift assurances from the owner that no oil [...]

CEO Confession: Clean Air Wastes Profit

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

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Right: Valero’s Amarillo refinery blast in February The chief funders of California’s anti-regulation Proposition 23 on the November ballot are a pair of Texas-based refiners, Valero and Tesoro. Each of them has two refineries in California and the last thing they want, from a profit standpoint, is regulation of greenhouse gases or any concerted attempt [...]

Coal’s Anonymous Dirt

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Big Coal is planning an anonymous campaign blitz against elected officials (in Kentucky in this case) who dare to favor any restrictions on coal. That's according to an internal coal company memo obtained by Kentucky's Lexington Herald newspaper. This is only a tiny piece of the fallout from the Supreme Court's decision to let corporations pour unlimited anonymous money into political campaigns. How many of these memos do we not know about?

Hayward’s Golden Parachute Worth $18.5 Mil

Monday, July 26, 2010

Ahead of tomorrow’s anticipated release of BP’s second-quarter financial statements–and of the massive losses–BP is expected to appoint Managing Director Bob Dudley to replace Tony Hayward as CEO during tonight’s board meeting in London. Hayward is rumored to be leaving his post with $18.5 million–the equivalent of a year’s salary and a guaranteed pension. (On [...]

Big Oil’s Boondoggle Machine

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Given the fury directed at BP in Congressional hearings on the Gulf oil spill, you’d think the time was ripe to cut the oil industry’s ridiculous subsidies–amounting to at least $40 billion per decade, according to a well-researched New York Times story over the July 4th weekend. But guess again. The oil industry has kept [...]

Beware BP spin on size record

Thursday, July 1, 2010

7-01-2010 by dugan BP’s devastating oil spill may now be the largest accidental spill in modern history, bigger than the estimated 140 million gallons spewed by the 1979-80 Ixtoc spill off the coast of Mexico, which eventually slimed 170 miles of Texas beaches. It’s smaller only than the deliberate spillage by Iraq into the [...]

Big Oil’s New Ballot War

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

06-23-10 by dugan Californians are getting sick to death of corporate-sponsored ballot initiatives. And they’re catching on to who’s behind the slogans, voting down two deceptively marketed initiatives on the June ballot that were wholly owned by a power company and an auto insurance company. But here it comes again. A ballot initiative mostly [...]

Chevron’s Protection Racket

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

06-23-10 by dugan The latest round of state political contribution reports show that Chevron has given another $250,000 to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s huge political slush fund, the "California Dream Team." That makes a total of more than $1.25 million straight from Chevron to Schwarzenegger. The governor can’t run again, and there are no [...]

Final Thoughts

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Final Thoughts by Khan BP will have to evaluate long and hard as to whether Hayward’s strategy today–be evasive as possible for seemingly legal reasons–was worth the public excoriation that is starting to pile on. Hayward declined to answer most questions about what went wrong, citing a reluctance to speculate amidst "ongoing investigations". And when [...]

Hayward: ‘No reckless behavior’

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Hayward: "No evidence of reckless behavior" by Khan In response to Rep. Stearns’ (FL) question about whether people were suffering in the Gulf due to BP’s reckless behavior, Hayward responds: "There was no evidence of reckless behavior." Of course, admitting recklessness would exponentially raise BP’s liability in the spill. But he should at least have [...]

Barton’s Non-Apology

Thursday, June 17, 2010