industryterm:oil industry

Le manque de transparence des autorités saoudiennes lors du déclenchement de cas du nouveau virus de grippe aviaire à Hufuf pose potentiellement problème.

Virus’s Toll in Saudi Arabia Raises Fears of Faster Spread - WSJ.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578466170461787346.html

nternational public-health officials say they are as concerned about the coronavirus as they are about the new H7N9 avian flu virus that recently began sickening people in eastern China. The flu has hit more people—128 are known to have been infected as of May 2, including 26 who died—than the coronavirus.

But the coronavirus so far appears deadlier, with 30 cases including 18 deaths. And it may now be spreading from one person to another, international health officials say—unlike H7N9, which isn’t spreading widely between people. [...]

“They may have much more information but it surely hasn’t been forthcoming,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, of the Saudi government. “The Saudis need to lay this out as completely as possible. We’ve all been concerned about the lack of transparency with regard to the Saudi investigation. It’s not just about an endemic problem within the country. It represents a global threat.”

BBC News - EU eases Syria oil embargo to help opposition
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22254996

On Monday, the Council of the European Union agreed to ease the oil embargo on Syria “so as to help the civilian population and the opposition”, according to a statement.

The governments of member states will now be able to authorise on a case-by-case basis three types of transactions - imports of oil and petroleum products; exports of key equipment and technology for the oil and gas industry to Syria; and investments in the Syrian oil industry.

Une revue du livre de James Marriott et Mika Minio-Paluello, “The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London” -

The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London | Counterfire
http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/16385-the-oil-road-journeys-from-the-caspian-sea-to-the-city-of-london

The Oil Road provides an illuminating picture of political and economic power through the form of a travelogue across the countries affected by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline

The great oil swindle
http://mondediplo.com/2013/03/09gaz

The shale gas revolution was meant to bring lasting prosperity. But the result of the gas glut may be just a bubble, producing no more than a temporary recovery that masks deep structural instability. Source: Le Monde diplomatique

Iran Suggests U.S. and Israel Are Behind Computer Attacks - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/world/middleeast/iran-says-hackers-targeted-power-plant-and-culture-ministry.html?hp&_r=1&

The latest Iranian sabotage reports raised the possibility that the attacks had been carried out in retaliation for others that crippled computers in the Saudi Arabian oil industry and some financial institutions in the United States a few months ago. American intelligence officials have said they believe that Iranian specialists in cybersabotage were responsible for those attacks, which erased thousands of Saudi files and temporarily prevented some American banking customers from gaining access to their accounts.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta cited those attacks in an Oct. 11 speech in which he warned of America’s vulnerability to a coordinated computer warfare attack, calling such a possibility a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”

peut-être la #cyberguerre ne fait-elle que des « cybermorts », mais la #logique_de_guerre reste identique… #cyberwar #stuxnet #iran #etats-unis via @alaingresh

• Edward Burtynsky’s Oil at the Photographers’ Gallery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2012/may/17/photographers-gallery-edward-burtynsky-in-pictures

The Photographers’ Gallery celebrates its reopening with an exhibition of works by the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who has been travelling the world documenting the impact of the oil industry since he was struck by an ’oil epiphany’ in 1997

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/15/1337103050275/Edward-Burtynsky-Oil-exhi-006.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/15/1337103047305/Edward-Burtynsky-Oil-exhi-005.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/15/1337103037070/Edward-Burtynsky-Oil-exhi-002.jpg
#photographie #pétrole

Nigeria’s oil: A desperate need for reform | The Economist

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21564906-goodluck-jonathan-says-he-wants-reform-oil-industry-really?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/pe/desperateneedofreform

Oct 20th 2012 | LAGOS | from the print edition

❝But the wealth still isn’t gurgling down

IN AUGUST Nigeria announced that oil production had reached a record 2.7m barrels a day but few experts believed it. Oil is also being stolen at a record rate and traders’ figures show output at well below the government’s figures. Information about Africa’s biggest oil industry is an opaque myriad of numbers. No one knows which ones are accurate; no one knows how much oil Nigeria actually produces. If there were an authoritative figure, the truly horrifying scope of corruption would be exposed.

The finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a genuine reformer, has estimated that 400,000 barrels of oil a day were stolen in April. But different government ministries give conflicting figures on how much oil Nigeria is producing, suggesting that they cannot agree or they just do not know. Nigeria could measure how much it produces, say experts: it has some of the most advanced technology in the world to do so, but chooses not to.
In this section

#nigeria #pétrole #énergie #gouvernance #corruption

Private Prison for Asylum Seekers on Pacific Island
►http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15784

Transfield Services, an Australian logistics company that provides services to the mining and oil industry among others, has won a A$24.5 million (US$25.9 million) contract from the government of Australia to run a detention center for asylum seekers in the Pacific island nation of Nauru.

In 2007 the Nauru detention center was shut down by the newly elected Labor government of Kevin Rudd as part of a plan to phase out the Pacific Solution as “costly, unsustainable, and wrong.” This policy was reversed last month by Rudd’s successor Julia Gillard, also from the Labor party, who announced a A$900 million (US$951.5 million) deal with Papua New Guinea and a A$2 billion (US$2.11 billion) deal with Nauru to accept new detainees.

Amnesty Australia began a petition to question the new policy. “Last time Australia sent asylum seekers to Nauru, conditions were so bad that a child swallowed a lightbulb to try and end his own life. Why will this time be any different?” the human rights group wrote.

In a bid to respond to these questions, the government has announced that it will pay the Salvation Army to provide counseling and recreation activities for asylum seekers.

#demandeurs_d'asile #Australie #rétention_privée #business #mauvais_traitement

CorpWatch : Private Prison for Asylum Seekers on Pacific Island

►http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15784
by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch Blog

September 17th, 2012

Transfield Services, an Australian logistics company that provides services to the mining and oil industry among others, has won a A$24.5 million (US$25.9 million) contract from the government of Australia to run a detention center for asylum seekers in the Pacific island nation of Nauru.

Australia’s immigration detention centers have a long and controversial history of being managed by private contractors. Australasian Correctional Management and G4S were heavily criticized for contracts won in 1997 and 2003 respectively. Recently guards for Serco, a British contractor that runs a number of detention centers and prisons in Australia, were accused of brutality including beating detainees at the Christmas Island center, as Patrick O’Keeffe reported for CorpWatch last year.

#migrations #asile #australie #déterritorialisation #centre-internement
#enfermement

Mission accomplished for big oil ? - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition (Le Monde diplomatique)
http://mondediplo.com/openpage/mission-accomplished-for-big-oil

Now, without its troops and bases, much of Washington’s political heft has vanished. Whether Iraq heads in the direction of dictatorship, sectarianism, or democracy remains to be seen, but if Iraqis again start to build a more democratic future, the U.S. will no longer be there to obstruct it. Meanwhile, if a new politics does emerge, Big Oil may discover that, in the end, it was mission unaccomplished. Source: Le Monde diplomatique

A Libyan’s Plea to the S.E.C.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/opinion/a-libyans-plea-to-the-sec-on-oil-industry-rules.html

While we are grateful to the Western countries that helped us topple Colonel Qaddafi last year, something perverse is happening in those countries now. Oil industry lobbyists are using their influence in Washington and Brussels to try to undermine transparency measures that could help prevent future tyrants from emerging. That must not be allowed to happen.

#corruption #transparence

Gaddafi-era official ’drowned’ in Danube
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/04/2012430172432510504.html

An autopsy done on Shukri Ghanem has found that the former Libyan oil minister drowned, Austrian police say.

Roman Hahslinger, police spokesman, said on Monday that the autopsy results on Ghanem’s corpse also showed there were no signs of violence.

Ghanem’s fully clothed body was found in the Danube in Vienna on Sunday, a few hundred meters from his home.

Hahslinger suggested the death may have been an accident and that Ghanem had complained to his daughter late on Saturday that he was not feeling well.

He said no suicide note has been found and there is no evidence Ghanem was under threat.

However, Vienna police and a Libyan security source suggested to the Reuters news agency that Ghanem, 69, could have been murdered.

L’ancien ministre du pétrole libyen se « noie », et la police « suggère » que peut-être il aurait pu être assassiné ? Ils sont drôlement complotistes, les flics viennois, dis-donc.

Oil lobby’s financial pressure on Obama over Keystone XL pipeline revealed | Environment | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/11/oil-lobby-money-obama-keystone

New analysis of oil industry contributions to members of Congress has revealed the level of the oil lobby’s financial firepower that Barack Obama can expect to face in the November elections if he refuses to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Now Maplight, an independent research group in Berkeley, California, that tracks the influence of money in politics, has conducted an analysis of oil industry contributions to members of Congress supporting the pipeline.

The study, which is due to be published on Wednesday, studied industry contributions to members of the House of Representatives which passed a bill last July that would have forced Obama to speed up approval of the Keystone project.

http://ecologie.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/01/13/quand-le-lobby-petrolier-arrose-le-congres-pour-favoriser-un-o

#industrie_pétrolière #lobby #corruption

Security firms hustle in lawless Libya - #mercenaires
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2011/12/09/Security-firms-hustle-in-lawless-Libya/UPI-75871323450621

As rival militias in postwar Libya wage turf wars in Tripoli and the interim government struggles to form a national army, Western mercenaries are moving in to fill the security vacuum in the oil-rich North African state.

Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that the executive bureau of the National Transitional Council, striving to govern a country wracked by gunfire and political feuding, is giving these companies the time of day.

[…]

Heavily armed militias, which formed the ragtag rebel alliance that defeated Gadhafi’s forces, with a major assist from NATO, are spread across the country, determined to control their home areas and defy the NTC.

Institutional memory and reverse smuggling
http://wrttn.in/04af1a

Institutional memory comes in two forms: people and documentation. People remember how things work and why. Sometimes they write it down and store that information somewhere. Institutional amnesia works similarly. The people leave and the documents disappear, rot, or just become forgotten (as it were).

Shell accused of fuelling violence in Nigeria by paying rival militant gangs (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/shell-accused-of-fuelling-nigeria-conflict

Shell has fuelled armed conflict in Nigeria by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to feuding militant groups, according to an investigation by the oil industry watchdog Platform, and a coalition of non-government organisations. The oil giant is implicated in a decade of human rights abuses in the Niger delta, the study says, claiming that its routine payments exacerbated local violence, in one case leading to the deaths of 60 people and the destruction of an entire town. (...) Source: The Guardian

Shell accused of fuelling violence in Nigeria by paying rival militant gangs | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/shell-accused-of-fuelling-nigeria-conflict

Shell has fuelled armed conflict in Nigeria by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to feuding militant groups, according to an investigation by the oil industry watchdog Platform, and a coalition of non-government organisations.

The oil giant is implicated in a decade of human rights abuses in the Niger delta, the study says, claiming that its routine payments exacerbated local violence, in one case leading to the deaths of 60 people and the destruction of an entire town.

Platform’s investigation, which includes testimony from Shell’s own managers, also alleges that government forces hired by Shell perpetrated atrocities against local civilians, including unlawful killings and systematic torture.

#pétrole #Nigeria

Shell accused of fuelling violence in Nigeria by paying rival militant gangs
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/shell-accused-of-fuelling-nigeria-conflict

Shell has fuelled armed conflict in Nigeria by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to feuding militant groups, according to an investigation by the oil industry watchdog Platform, and a coalition of non-government organisations.

18 mois avant la catastrophe du Golfe du Mexique, #BP a déjà eu un accident similaire au large de l’#Azerbaïdjan.

WikiLeaks cables : BP suffered blowout on Azerbaijan gas platform | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/15/wikileaks-bp-azerbaijan-gulf-spill

Striking resemblances between BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster and a little-reported giant gas leak in Azerbaijan experienced by the UK firm 18 months beforehand have emerged from leaked US embassy cables.

The cables reveal that some of BP’s partners in the gas field were upset that the company was so secretive about the incident that it even allegedly withheld information from them. They also say that BP was lucky that it was able to evacuate its 212 workers safely after the incident, which resulted in two fields being shut and output being cut by at least 500,000 barrels a day with production disrupted for months.

Les américains s’inquiètent alors plus de la mauvaise image qu’est en train de se forger BP en Azerbaïdjan, plutôt que de savoir si ces méthodes opérationnelles n’entraîneraient pas des risques ailleurs :

The cable continues: “At least some of BP’s ACG partners are similarly upset with BP’s performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its ACG partners. Although it is too early to ascertain the cause, if in fact this production shutdown was due to BP technical error, and if it continues for months (as seems possible), BP’s reputation in Azerbaijan will take a serious hit.”