Shell ’selling suicide’ by preferring tar sands to wind
Shell was accused yesterday of “selling suicide on the forecourt” by pressing ahead with tar sands operations in Canada and continuing to flare off excess gas in Nigeria while pulling out of renewable schemes such as the London Array - the world’s largest offshore wind scheme.
The accusation that Shell was irresponsibly adding to climate change was made by an unnamed shareholder at its annual meeting in The Hague after Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer insisted the company was doing all it could to meet rising demands for energy while reducing CO2 emissions. Shell would listen to all stakeholders but he warned “ultimately it will not be possible to meet fully everyone’s expectations”.
Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director of gas and power, defended the decision to put its stake in the London Array up for sale. The economics did not meet the group’s “hurdles rate”, she said. In terms of unit costs it was “two and a half times cheaper to build onshore projects in the US” than to pursue the scheme off the Kent coast, she explained, insisting Shell remained committed to renewables.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: alberta, caroline lucas, climate change, climate chaos, england, global warming, investors, oil sands, shell, stelmach, tar sands | No Comments »
Posted by mhudema on May 22, 2008
They Can’t Just Walk All Over Us Farmers Resist a Pipeline
Posted on: Wednesday, 21 May 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Lydersen, Kari
Carlisle Kelly saved money from his Amtrak job for years to buy one of the last remaining wooded pieces of land in the expansive farm country of central Illinois. Because, as he tells it, “I’m crazy about the animals.” An avid hunter and outdoorsman, he wanted to preserve the ancient oaks on a rare hilly, neverfarmed area near LeRoy, Illinois, and restore farmland back into native foliage for wild turkeys and deer. So Kelly, fifty-four, was furious last winter when representatives of Enbridge Inc., one of Canada’s largest oil transport companies, told him they needed to survey his land to build a pipeline through it.
“To me, tearing those trees out to build a pipeline is like tearing my arms and fingers off,” he says. “It’s a miracle those trees are even there. I made a promise to protect them.”
Enbridge wants to build a 175-mile, $350 million pipeline through Illinois to connect its northern and southern networks so that thick, gooey Albertan tar sand oil can be transported swiftly to Texas Gulf Coast refineries.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: alberta, climate change, enbridge, farmers, global warming, greenpeace, Illinois, Leroy, oil sands, stelmach, tar sands | No Comments »
Posted by mhudema on May 22, 2008
Environmental Groups Offer ‘Toxic Tour’ Of BP Refinery
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 10:23 AM CDT
As a spin-off of the Green Fest occurring this weekend in Chicago, environmental groups guided community members and media representatives around BP’s Whiting, Ind., oil refinery. The tour pointed to current sources of pollution, emphasizing that a planned expansion would boost the facility’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 5.8 million tons a year—the equivalent to adding 320,000 cars to the nation’s highways.
BP has proposed the expansion in order to refine low-grade crude from the environmentally devastating Canadian tar sands. Nearly 65 percent of the oil produced in the tar sands comes into the United States.
Complementing First Nations and international environmental opposition to development of the tar sands, local groups are opposing BP’s proposed expansion. The Calumet Project and the Global Community Monitor have appealed an air permit granted for BP’S proposed expansion, which would allow for increased sulfur dioxide, lead and particulate matter emissions.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: alberta, bp, british petroleum, oil sands, rainforest action network, stelmach, tar sands | No Comments »
