Energy, Mining & Utilities

The betting in energy circles is that Enron's erstwhile big cheeses are in deep trouble now that the company's former top trader has pleaded guilty to manipulating the California power market. Read More

First, the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe let loose on W. Bush. The papers disclosed that while a director and paid consultant for Harken Energy Bush had actively participated in the creation of off-the-books accounting gimmicks to hide company debt and raise the company's stock price. The deal, which the company did in conjunction with Harvard Management, created an off-the-books partnership strikingly similar to the kind Enron used to accomplish the same goals -- and which Bush has condemned. Read More

October 9, 2002 -- Harken's largest shareholder, Harvard University, used its endowment to bail out the failing company under Bush's watch, misleading investors; HarvardWatch calls for full disclosure of the partnership, launches reform campaign. Read More

As India prepares for the next round of international climate change negotiations, CorpWatch is co-organizing a Climate Justice Summit to demand a solution from a labor, human rights and environmental justice perspective. Read More

BOSTON -- President Bush's former oil firm formed a partnership with Harvard University that concealed the company's financial woes and may have misled investors, a student and alumni group said in a report on Wednesday. Read More

OilWatch and the member organizations of Ecuador and Nigeria are calling on a Boycott to Chevron-Texaco Company, to punish this company for the environmental damages and the Human Rights abuses commited during its operations in Nigeria and Ecuador. Read More

WASHINGTON, DC -- Environmental groups in Germany and the US released a new report today that provides conclusive evidence that the German Bank Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) violated its own policies in loaning $900 million to the OCP Consortium building Ecuador's new heavy crude pipeline. The independent report written by Robert Goodland, former Chief of the Environmental Department of the World Bank, found, ''substantial non-compliance with all four applicable WBG's [World Bank Group] Social and Environmental Safeguard Policies.'' Specifically, the report found violations of World Bank Operational Policies on Environmental Assessment, Natural Habitats, Involuntary Resettlement, and Indigenous Peoples. Read More

WASHINGTON -- A U.S.-led ouster of President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and Iraqi opposition leaders. Read More

WASHINGTON, DC -- The construction of a 650 mile long buried pipeline to carry oil from landlocked Chad in central Africa to Cameroon's Atlantic coast is one step closer to reality over the objections of environmental and human rights groups. Read More

WASHINGTON (August 30, 2002) -- As citizens and governments descend on Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the oil industry is gathering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the World Petroleum Congress. Ten years ago, Rio was host to the first Earth Summit, at which nations of the world promised to combat global warming and enhance global conservation efforts. But a new study released today by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that in the last ten years, over $22 billion in corporate handouts were given to the oil, gas and coal industry operating in Latin America. Read More