Al-Qaida-linked militants seize BP complex in Algeria, take hostages over Mali

By Aomar Ouali And Paul Schemm - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

ALGIERS, Algeria – In what could be the first spillover from France’s intervention in Mali, Islamist militants attacked and occupied a natural gas complex partly operated by energy company BP in southern Algeria on Wednesday. Two foreigners were killed and possibly dozens of others, including Americans, were taken hostage.

A militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Algeria’s support of France’s operation against al-Qaida-linked Malian rebels groups far to the southeast. It said it was holding 41 foreigners, including seven Americans.

Algerian forces have surrounded the complex and the state news agency reported a bit more than 20 people we’re being held, including Americans, Britons, Norwegians, French and Japanese, citing the local authorities.

“Algeria will not respond to terrorist demands and rejects all negotiations,” announced Algeria’s top security official, Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia on television. Continue…

Econowatch

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 2:04 PM - 0 Comments

Markets are sinking; foreclosures are rising; and the fiscal cliff is looming. The United States is in pretty rough shape again. Right on cue, the Occupy Wall Street movement is back, with a new campaign launched last week called Rolling Jubilee. Described as “a bailout of the people by the people” it buys up distressed household debt (like credit card debt) that’s normally sold by lenders to collection agencies for a fraction of its original value. Rather than try to collect on it, Rolling Jubilee forgives the debt. As of last week, it had raised $285,000 in donations, enough to buy $5.7-million worth of defaulted loans.

Rolling Jubilee has received almost unanimously positive attention (even Forbes praised the idea). It uses private donations, and the way the distressed debt is sold means those lucky enough to have their debts forgiven are chosen at random. More importantly, it’s a creative, free-market response to what is still a serious problem dogging America’s economy, and one that could soon blow the bottom out of Canada’s.

Last week, a Bank of Canada official warned yet again that household indebtedness is the biggest risk facing the economy—bigger than a U.S. recession, Europe’s debt crisis or falling demand for commodities. Interest rates aren’t going anywhere (except maybe down), either, so indebtedness is only going to keep growing. (It’s fair to say the central bank’s debt warnings over the years have been useless, and now border on disingenuous). Continue…

Tony Hayward’s comeback

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Alex Wong/Getty Images

He became infamous during the Gulf of Mexico spill. Now he’s drilling for oil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Drilling for oil has become an increasingly risky business. Most unexploited reservoirs are either far below the ocean, or in parts of the world where extracting the fossil fuel is either exceedingly expensive (like Alberta’s oil sands), or too dangerous. And Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP, doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.

After leaving BP last year in the wake of the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill, Hayward recently re-emerged at the helm of a London-based energy investment company that, far from playing it safe, is hoping to strike it rich in one of the most geopolitically challenging places on earth: Iraqi Kurdistan. With Americans still furious about his now infamous Gulf crisis remark, “I want my life back,” Hayward earlier this year joined forces with financier Nat Rothschild, ex-Goldman Sachs banker Julian Metherell and entrepreneur Tom Daniels to create a so-called “blank cheque” investment company. Called Valleres PLC, it promised to buy and run an oil company somewhere in the world—and raised US$2.2 billion. “He is one of the most talented oil executives in the world,” says Karl Moore, a business professor at McGill University. “And some rich people saw that and said, ‘Hey, now we can get this guy to work for us.’ ”

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Choking the oil sands

By Chris Sorensen and Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:21 AM - 20 Comments

Jiri Rezac/WWF/Polaris

Over the next few weeks, as many as 2,000 climate change protesters are expected to descend on Washington in an effort to draw more Americans into the debate over Alberta’s oil sands—one of the most carbon-intensive sources of fossil fuel on the planet. But this time, anti-oil sands groups aren’t focusing on the vast open pit mines near Fort McMurray, which one activist memorably compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fire-spewing and charcoal-covered realm of Mordor, but on a major pipeline project that the industry needs to move forward with its expansion plans.

Supported by such high-profile environmentalists and left-leaning luminaries as David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, the protesters, who will risk arrest during their White House sit-in, hope to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from approving the proposed 2,673-km Keystone XL pipeline that is being built by TransCanada Corp. and would move crude oil from northern Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, north of the border, anti-pipeline rallies are scheduled to take place over the next few months in Vancouver and Ottawa. In addition to the Keystone XL project, the Canadian rallies will also focus on a proposed 1,170-km pipeline, built by Enbridge Inc., that would connect northern Alberta to an oil-shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C., running through an area that opponents claim is pristine wilderness and the habitat of a sacred species of bear.
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The lessons not learned from the Gulf Coast oil spill

By Joseph Boyden - Monday, May 2, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 3 Comments

Lee Celano/Reuters

Already it’s been a year since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men lost their lives in that tragic—and absolutely avoidable—event, one that ushered in a new, dark era for the population of the Gulf Coast. What we witnessed slowly, sickeningly unfold down here over the next several months, like some crawling black plague into the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, was not just the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, but one of the worst in recent world history.

Yes, we along the coast were already steeled to face federal, state and local government inaction and plain old confusion, masked by lies that tried to downplay the scope of the crisis. A hurricane half a decade ago prepared us for that. What many of us sadly weren’t prepared for was to have British Petroleum, that monstrous multinational powerhouse, whisper sweet nothings into our ears about how everything was going to be just fine, us little guys bent painfully over its leaking oil barrels. Apparently, it’s the whole “fool me once, shame on you” scenario playing out its second chorus, and so shame on us for not wanting to dare envision that after only one short year of BP playing out its good cop/bad cop act, or should I say responsible corporation/profitable corporation ruse, it now begins the act of walking away, wiping its hands of any further blame or restitution.

People down here seem to me to exist in two very different worlds of anger when it comes to what BP has rendered in our lives. There are those most directly impacted by the spill—the commercial fishermen, oystermen and shrimpers, the very ones who deserve to be most livid—who seem to be the ones who’ve learned to temper their anger in an almost Zen-like way. And then there are the rest of us who care, a large and amorphous group, the ones who were less directly affected and yet, ironically, seem the most deeply angry at this mess that’s been left behind on our doorstep.

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Why BP is one slick investment

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:48 PM - 1 Comment

It’s been nine months since the blowout at BP’s Macondo well sunk a US$350-million drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and creating an unprecedented U.S. environmental catastrophe. At the height of the crisis, oil gushed uncontrollably from the sea floor and fears mounted that BP would ultimately become a casualty of the spill’s spiralling costs, so far pegged at US$40 billion.

But as a new year dawns, it looks unlikely that any of the corporate doomsday scenarios will come to pass. With coastlines returning to normal and underwater oil apparently dissolving away, BP’s U.S.-traded shares have climbed by 60 per cent over the past six months, from a low of US$26.75 last June to around US$43 as investors grow more confident the company’s darkest days are behind it. “It’s a recovery story,” says Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James Financial. For investors, that means the possibility of more big returns down the road—some are speculating BP’s shares could reach US$60 later this year, about where they were before the blowout—but there are also still risks.

The biggest question mark is a recent lawsuit filed by the Obama administration against BP and its partners that accuses them of failing to adhere to U.S. environmental laws and safety regulations in the Gulf, where BP is the biggest operator. BP could also face criminal charges under the country’s Clean Water Act, with some estimates of damages as high as US$20 billion if BP is found to be “grossly negligent” in the run-up to the disaster.

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Sidney Crosby vs. BP

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 17, 2010 at 5:41 PM - 2 Comments

Sidney Crosby

He’s the man behind the brilliant, blindingly quick goal that sent this country into a paroxysm of joy at the 2010 Olympic Games. It was, without overstating, the goal that defined the Games themselves, so vivid is its memory, and so deep its impression on the national psyche. As challenging as 2010 has been—with its wars, natural disasters and political upheavals—“the Goal” resides on a higher plane, dwarfing among other things Sidney Crosby’s other achievements, which include a Stanley Cup and a host of personal awards.

BP

Former CEO Tony Hayward—the man tasked with explaining the world’s largest-ever oil spill—climbed to the top of oil giant BP as a reformer who stated, after a 2005 refinery explosion, that his company’s leadership “doesn’t listen sufficiently well.” But after the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hayward, 53, didn’t seem to have absorbed his own lessons. He told reporters he “wanted his life back,” refused to answer queries from congressmen, and attended a yacht race while one of the worst environmental catastrophes on record slowly unfolded.

Chilean miners vs. BP

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

The Chilean miners

The now-infamous Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped underground in the collapsed San José mine in Chile’s Atacama desert. Their rescue was watched by as many as one billion people and transformed several of the miners into global celebrities. Brad Pitt’s production company is reportedly trying to secure exclusive film rights to their story. One of the miners, Edison Peña, says his time underground has made him more human. “I think I’m loving everybody more,” he told the BBC. “I believe in touching people. I think I love myself more.”

BP

Former CEO Tony Hayward—the man tasked with explaining the world’s largest-ever oil spill—climbed to the top of oil giant BP as a reformer who stated, after a 2005 refinery explosion, that his company’s leadership “doesn’t listen sufficiently well.” But after the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hayward, 53, didn’t seem to have absorbed his own lessons. He told reporters he “wanted his life back,” refused to answer queries from congressmen, and attended a yacht race while one of the worst environmental catastrophes on record slowly unfolded.

Back to the contest bracket

The iPad vs. BP

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 5:23 PM - 0 Comments

The iPad

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in January at a company event in San Francisco, somebody in the audience wolf whistled. Nicknamed the Jesus tablet, Apple’s iPad (a portable touch-screen computer that can play videos, surf the Net, and serve as an e-reader, to name just a few of its functions) hit store shelves in April, selling over 300,000 units in its first day. Its success sent traditional media stalwarts (the Washington Post, the New Yorker) scrambling to become iPad-compatible. This sleek tablet turned out to be so good, it made everyone forget how ridiculous the name “iPad” once seemed.

BP

Former CEO Tony Hayward—the man tasked with explaining the world’s largest-ever oil spill—climbed to the top of oil giant BP as a reformer who stated, after a 2005 refinery explosion, that his company’s leadership “doesn’t listen sufficiently well.” But after the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hayward, 53, didn’t seem to have absorbed his own lessons. He told reporters he “wanted his life back,” refused to answer queries from congressmen, and attended a yacht race while one of the worst environmental catastrophes on record slowly unfolded.

Back to the contest bracket

That British reaction to Obama, shorter version

By Colby Cosh - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 1:11 AM - 15 Comments

British politicians should certainly be standing up for Britain’s largest corporation in the face of xenophobic attacks on British Petroleum’s management by the President of the United States! This is nothing more or less than an attack on British pensioners whose comfortable retirements depend on shares of good old British Petroleum! BP’s dividends are our lifeblood! Now is not the time for our leaders to be timid in defending a great British CEO and British corporate interests! Mrs. Thatcher didn’t play these sorts of games when the American-owned Piper Alpha blew up! I ask you, what happened to the so-called “special relationship”?

On the other hand, it would be totally outrageous to suggest that Britain bears any collective responsibility for the management of the rig! Are we going to point the finger of blame at British pensioners just because they stood to receive the profits if everything went well, but now that it hasn’t, it’s the Gulf Coast that must suffer? Isn’t President Obama aware of the rudimentary fact that BP is no longer “British Petroleum”, but a global brand? Plus, hello, the owner of the rig was Transocean Ltd.—pretty much an American company, although they’re technically based in Switzerland! But, remember, “BP” is not in any sense British, even though its head office is still in the City!

Look, let’s not get caught up in technicalities! The point is, we don’t necessarily like the tone of these anti-British attacks on a company that, by the way, isn’t even British! The oil was destined for your market! If you want it, maybe you should clean up the mess! But, uh, that’s not to say you should nationalize BP’s resources in the Gulf of Mexico or anything like that! We in Britain would regard that as an act of xenophobic belligerence! Although, again, there’s no necessary connection left between “BP” and Great Britain! That’s just a vestige of history! Pretty much a coincidence! Can’t we just blame the Koreans and move on?

Is the BP Boycott unethical?

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 5:10 PM - 20 Comments

That the boycott is useless is a given. But is it also unethical?

That’s the claim that Chris Macdonald argues for at his Business Ethics blog. As Chris (and others) have pointed out, BP is no longer in the retail gasoline business. Almost all its outlets are privately run operations, not all of which sell exclusively BP gasoline. Other stations sell BP gasoline under different brand names, and besides, there aren’t many other companies out there that are ethically much better than BP. So, the boycott will hurt innocent small business owners, and not hurt the target at all. Sounds like a bad idea to me.

So how can you hurt BP, if that’s what you feel inclined to do? The best, and probably only, thing to do is radically reduce your fossil fuel consumption. Sell your car, buy a smaller house, stop flying, and so on. Alternatively (or should I say, in addition) you can redirect that anger to something positive — give money or time to one of the organizations working to mitigate the effects of the spill. Ultimately, the only serious solution will be a collective one, that keeps a lot more fossil fuel in the ground where it belongs. Might be time to sign up for the local chapter of Canadians for a Big Fat Carbon Tax.

Meanwhile, on a mostly unrelated topic, I’m having a contest over at my other blog. Entries more than welcome.

The cost of doing business

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 13 Comments

Just in from the White House: “The Obama Administration today sent a preliminary bill for $69.09 million to BP and other responsible parties for response and recovery operations relating to the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The Administration will continue to bill BP regularly for all associated costs to ensure the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund is reimbursed on an ongoing basis.”

BP’s 2009 profits: $14 billion in a bad year.

Cleaning up the world's worst oil spills

By Rachel Mendleson - Friday, April 30, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 21 Comments

In the days since a BP oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, vast amounts of oil have been pouring into the water. The damage is worse than originally thought: the U.S. Coast Guard has revised its earlier estimate, indicating that some 5,000 barrels of oil are spilling into the water off the coast of Louisiana each day. As the slick moves toward the fragile coastline ecosystems, the race to contain it is underway. On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared the spill “of national significance,” pledging to devote “every available asset” to stopping it.

PHOTO GALLERY
“A massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster” — Photos from the spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico

In the meantime, BP is trying to contain it any way it can: in addition to using skimmers to remove the thickest substance, 76,000 tons of dispersant to break up the oil, and setting up miles of barriers to protect the coast, the company is experimenting with controlled burns—a last-ditch effort that carries environmental consequences. (Though burning oil changes its consistency, making less likely to coat marine life, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, it creates a “black plume” of smoke.) Despite past experience with oil spills, there’s no tried-and-true way to contain them. Here’s a look at how the world’s top five marine oil spills were (or weren’t) contained:

5. ABT Summer: On May 28, 1991, there was an explosion aboard the ABT Summer, an oil tanker en route from Iran to Rotterdam. The ship, which was carrying 260,000 tons of oil, caught fire. After three days, it sank 1,300 km off the coast of Angola.* Because it was so far off-shore, there was no rush to clean up the damage; it was assumed that high seas would break up the large slick.

4. Nowruz Oil Field: On February 10, 1983, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, an oil tanker slammed into a platform at the Nowruz Oil Field in the Persian Gulf. The conflict delayed efforts to cap the ensuing spill, and an estimated 1,500 barrels drained into the water each day. In March, Iraqi planes attacked the platform, setting the oil slick ablaze. By the time the well was finally capped in September—an Iranian operation that killed 11 people—it had released some 260,000 tons of oil into the sea. The clean-up effort largely centered around the use of skimmers and pumps by Norpol, a Norwegian company.

3. Atlantic Empress/Aegean Captain: On July 19, 1979, two oil tankers, the Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain collided off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago during a tropical storm. The ships, which contained nearly 500,000 tons of crude oil between them, burst into flames on impact. Crews successfully extinguished the fire aboard the Aegean and it was towed to shore, but the blaze continued to rage on the Atlantic. After more than two weeks of firefighting efforts, an explosion sunk the ship, which had by then been dragged further out to sea. Dispersants were used to treat the spilled oil, curbing pollutants. In the end, an estimated 280,000 tons poured into the Caribbean—the record for a ship-source spill.

2. Ixtoc I: On June 3, 1979, Pemex, Mexico’s government-owned oil company, was drilling a 3.2 km deep oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, when the Ixtoc I exploded. The blow out, which occurred when the drill ran into high pressure, soon caught fire and caused the platform to collapse. A team of experts arrived quickly at the site, about 970 km south of Texas, but because of poor visibility and seafloor debris, it took divers until the following March to cap the well. In the meantime, between 10,000 and 30,000 barrels of oil poured into the water each day, totaling an estimated 454,000 tons. To slow the flow, mud (and later, steel balls) were dropped into the well. According to Pemex, half the oil burned when it reached the surface, and a third evaporated. Norwegian experts contained the spill using skimming equipment and booms.

1. Gulf War: In the first days of the Gulf War, Iraqi military forces opened the valves at the Sea Island oil terminal in Kuwait, releasing vast amounts of crude oil into the Persian Gulf. The spill, which began on January 21, consisted of up to eight million barrels (between 1,360,000 and 1,500,000 tons), making it the largest in history. Because of the war, clean-up was delayed, but an international effort did eventually get underway. Using smart bombs, Coalition forces were able to seal the open pipelines at the Al Ahmadi facility, and American and Dutch workers built ponds in the desert to store the oil they pumped from the water. Booms and skimmers were used to keep the oil away from the desalination plants, which provided drinking water to residents in the area. In the end, the spill was not as catastrophic as initially feared: roughly half the oil evaporated, two to three million barrels washed ashore and a million barrels were recovered.

(*Corrected from an earlier version, which erroneously stated that the ABT Summer sank 130,000 km off the coast of Angola.)