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News Articles
| US/IRAQ: U.S. Companies Join Race on Iraqi Oil Bonanza
by TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, New York Times
January 13th, 2010
American companies have been arriving in Iraq to pursue an expected multibillion-dollar bonanza of projects to revive the country’s petroleum industry. But there are questions about the Iraqi government’s capacity to police the companies. “These are for-profit concerns and they are trying to make as much money as they can,” said Pratap Chatterjee of CorpWatch. |
| US/CHINA: U.S. Holds Fire in Google-China Feud
by JAY SOLOMON, IAN JOHNSONAnd JASON DEAN, Wall Street Journal
January 12th, 2010
U.S. government officials and business leaders were supportive but wary of taking sides in Google Inc.'s battle with China, a sign of the delicate tensions between the growing superpower and the West. Google has threatened to bolt from China over censorship and alleged cyber spying. |
| NIGERIA: Ex-militant leader heads SPDC’s patrol team
by Chris Ejim, Nigerian Compass
January 8th, 2010
Authorities of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) have unveiled a new security strategy for securing oil pipelines and platforms within the Niger Delta region. Shell has appointed former MEND militant commander, Eris Paul, and his company, Eristex Pipeline Patrol, to secure oil facilities in the Southern Ijaw area of the Delta. |
| GHANA: Corruption probe into sale of Ghana oil block
by William Wallis, Martin Arnold and Brooke Masters, Financial Times
January 7th, 2010
US and Ghanaian authorities are investigating corruption allegations involving a Texas oil company and the local partner that helped it secure control of the Ghanaian oil block that yielded one of Africa’s biggest recent discoveries. The case risks complicating efforts by Texas company Kosmos to sell its stake in the Jubilee oil field to ExxonMobil in a deal valued at $4bn. |
| EUROPE: Europe’s Vast Farm Subsidies Face Challenges
by STEPHEN CASTLE and DOREEN CARVAJAL, New York Times
December 29th, 2009
The last time the European Union decided the future of its 50 billion euro agricultural aid program, in 2005, the deal was cut behind closed doors in a luxury suite at the five-star Conrad Brussels hotel. Now, 2013 is closer at hand and a new round of maneuvering has begun to reshape the richest system of agricultural handouts in the world. |
CorpWatch Blog
CorpWatch Exclusives
 | The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble
by Andrew Nikiforuk, Special to CorpWatch
December 14th, 2009
Patrick Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc, is bullish about the future of unconventional oil from Canada’s massive tar sand deposits. His company not only operates North America’s longest crude oil and liquid pipelines, but transports 12 percent of the oil that the U.S. imports daily. Canada’s bitumen, or dirty crude, lies under a forest area the size of England and is arguably the world’s last remaining giant oil field. |
 | Bhopal: Generations of Poison
by Nityanand Jayaraman, Special to CorpWatch
December 2nd, 2009
On the night of December 2-3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India leaked poisonous methyl iso cyanate into its densely populated neighborhood, killing 8,000 people in the immediate aftermath. 25 years later, Dow Chemical (which purchased Union Carbide in 2001) still refuses to clean up the site. But a new generation of Bhopal survivors is taking on the fight. |
 | CorpWatch Announces Version 2.0 of the CrocTail Corporate Subsidiaries Database and Open API
Special to CorpWatch
November 24th, 2009
Developed with support from the Sunlight Foundation, CrocTail provides an interface for browsing information about several hundred thousand corporations publicly traded in the U.S. and their domestic and foreign subsidiaries. In this new version, users can click on different years and see how subsidiary relationships for a company have changed over time. |
 | Black & Veatch's Tarakhil Power Plant: White Elephant in Kabul
by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
November 19th, 2009
In a secluded valley a few miles from Kabul's international airport, $285 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars have flowed into a Black & Veatch-built power plant outside Tarakhil village. But, far from the public relations coup the project was intended to supply, the plant has run into problems with planning, cost over-runs and alleged corruption. |
 | Damming Magdalena: Emgesa Threatens Colombian Communities
by Jonathan Luna, Special to CorpWatch
July 21st, 2009
Near the town of La Jagua, overlooking the Magdalena River, the landscape is dotted with concrete markers declaring the land, river, and everything else a “public utility” that Colombia has given to the energy company Emgesa as part of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project. A construction permit was granted in May, with the dam scheduled for full operation by 2014. |
Commentary & Analysis
| CHINA: Business, and Repression, as Usual
by Richard Cohen, The New York Times
January 19th, 2006
Anatole France in 1894 wrote, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." In somewhat less literary language, Microsoft has just said the same thing.
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| CANADA: Not One or Two, but Hundreds of Protests
by Naomi Klein, Globe and Mail
April 24th, 2001
It's not just that the police didn't get the joke, it's that they don't get that they the new era of political protest, one adapted to our post-modern times. There was no one person or group who could call off "their people," because the tens of thousands who came out to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas are part of a movement that doesn't have a leader, a center, or even an agreed-upon name. |
| Women and Children -- Labor Base of Mexican, North American Economy
by Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and Analysis
March 2nd, 1999
The murder of 13-year-old Irma Angelica Rosales should lead to a time of reflection about the nature of the north American economy. To a degree we seldom stop to consider, women and children increasingly provide the labor base of the North American economy, including what supposedly represents its most "advanced" sectors. |
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