#BP

If multinationals were willing to hire PMCs to protect their employees, why did they not use these PMCs to defend their oil fields from ISIS militarily, preventing the fields from falling in the first place?

  One chapter of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which occurred back on April 20, 2010, has been closed, but not everybody is satisfied with the resolution.   On January 29th, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance approved a November 2012 plea bargain agreement between the British oil giant BP p.l.c. and the United States Department […]

I wouldn’t be the first person to analogize Americans’ thirst to fossil fuels to an addiction.  The arch-environmentalist George W. Bush said the US was “addicted to oil” in his State of the Union address in 2006.  What we do for the Mexican drug gangs in terms of addiction to their products while advancing their […]

Petrobras announced today the discovery of gas reserves in the Camarupin fields in the Santos Basin as well as the signing of a landmark $160 million-dollar deal with GE Oil & Gas to develop power turbines for offshore platforms. These announcements come on the heels of Tuesday’s press release by Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (Agência Nacional […]

The BP Gulf oil spill threatens to undermine the ‘special relationship in trade and global leadership between the U.S. and U.K. With the British press and even some officials increasingly seeing attacks on Britain itself in President Obama and his Administration’s criticisms of BP, PM Cameron has sought to calm the waters. During a visit to Afghanistan two weeks ago, he said the gulf oil spill was just one item in what was described by his spinmeisters as a “routine” phone conversation with President Obama, but he dodged direct questions about any perception of an “anti-British” side to the criticisms of BP.

According to the law of comparative advantage in economics, each country has production advantages in comparison to other states. Venezuela too, has its strengths. It produces more Major League baseball players per capita than most other countries. Along with Puerto Rico, it has won the most Miss Universe crowns over the past two decades. Venezuela […]

This is a characteristically compelling cover from “The New Yorker.” I do continue to be astonished that, after all these years and all the blood and treasure we’ve squandered for this fool’s gold, we’re still destroying ourselves and the earth we call home by relentlessly extracting, transporting and burning oil.

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the UN Development Program (UNDP)’s Civil Society Advisory Committee. The significance of this committee for UN accountability merits attention. The UN – and most donor countries, for that matter – spends a good deal of time preaching the importance of civil society. As the line goes, civil […]

Here, courtesy of NASA, is a look at two Gulf of Mexico dead zones:  one well established, as a consequence of runoff  (manure, fertilizer, wastewater treatment plant effluent, etc.) from the breadbasket of the US, and the other in the making, from BP’s disastrous well blowout.