Energy, Mining & Utilities
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.
With their newly opened pipeline, British Petroleum (BP) is cutting a path of environmental and social irresponsibility from the Caspian to the Mediterranean.
A militant group on Tuesday said that 90 percent of some 5,000 residents of an island in Albay had signed the petition calling for the permanent closure of the operations of an Australian-financed mining firm in the area.
President Bush has appointed a former aide to the American oil company Unocal, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, as special envoy to Afghanistan. The nomination was announced December 31, nine days after the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul.
Since Dick Cheney became a candidate for Vice President, many journalists have focused on his mixed financial record as CEO of Halliburton, and his enormous retirement package. Few have investigated Dick Cheney's role in influencing foreign policy for the benefit of the company.
Chevron - the Northern California-based oil and gas company - has been quietly acquiring rights to drill for natural gas in Eastern Europe using "fracking" technology - a controversial technique. However, grassroots opposition in Bulgaria and Romania has thwarted the companies plans so far.
Rimbunan Hijau, a billion-dollar business owned by Malaysian tycoon Tiong Hiew King, has been engaging in illegal logging in South East Asia, while local governments turn a blind eye.
The world's oil, gas and mining industries account for nearly two-thirds of all violations of human rights, environmental laws and international labour standards, according to a soon-to-be-released United Nations study.
Environmentalists estimate around 2.5 million acres of rainforest were compromised or destroyed in Texaco's search for oil in Ecuador. It is a disaster that has left the jungle ravaged and its people dying of cancer.
In Colchester, Essex, John and Alfred Donovan are compiling perhaps the world's largest dossier on Royal Dutch Shell, at royaldutchshellplc.com. It's an awkward position for Shell, this month crowned by Fortune magazine as the world's largest company, as trying to shut the website down would draw even more attention to it.