Oil industry safety record blown open

National Wildlife Federation says catalogue of oil industry accidents proves BP disaster in Gulf of Mexico is not a one-off ...

In a further grim reminder, the American midwest was in the throes of its own environmental disaster today, with a ruptured pipeline gushing gallons of oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

Enbridge Energy, which is Canadian-owned but based in Houston, said the spill may have reached 1m gallons. Federal government officials in Washington and the state of Michigan were struggling to stop the oil from reaching the Great Lakes ...

The report from the National Wildlife Federation drew on records from the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with a figure of 1,440 offshore leaks, blowouts, and other accidents were reported between 2001-2007.

In addition to environmental damage, these caused 41 deaths and 302 injuries.

The safety record for onshore activities was even more dismal.

Some 2,554 pipeline accidents occurred between 2001 and 2007, killing 161 people and injuring 576 ...

Guardian  29 July 2010    Eating the Future    Peak Oil

Assault on America

Cairn Energy's Arctic oil drilling plan condemned

BP makes record loss as Tony Hayward quits

BP has reported one of the largest losses in British corporate history because of the cost of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and confirmed this morning that embattled chief executive Tony Hayward is leaving the company.

In its second-quarter results the company has set aside $32.2bn (£20.7bn) to meet the cost of the clean-up, far higher than the City had expected and plunging the company into a $17bn loss, compared with a profit last year of $3.1bn.

To pay for the mounting costs of the spill created by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April, BP plans to sell $30bn worth of assets – predominantly oil and gas fields – over the next 18 months.

Hayward will receive a £1m payoff and a pension expected to be worth about half a million pounds a year.

He will be replaced by an American, Bob Dudley, a BP veteran who is currently overseeing the clean-up of the oil spill.

Hayward, who will quit his post as chief executive in October and leave the board the following month, will become a non-executive director of the firm's Russian joint venture TNK-BP ...

Hayward ... is leaving after almost 30 years with BP.

The company said that under the terms of his contract he will receive a year's salary in lieu of notice, amounting to £1.045m.

He will also leave with a pension pot worth over £10m ...

Guardian  27 July 2010    Wealth Log

BP was 'a model of corporate social responsibility'

Deepwater Horizon alarms were switched off 'to help workers sleep'

Alarms and safety mechanisms on gulf disaster oil rig were disabled, chief technician at Transocean reveals ...

Mike Williams, who was in charge of maintaining the rig's electronic systems, was giving evidence to the federal panel in New Orleans that is investigating the cause of the disaster on 20 April, which killed 11 people.

Williams told the hearing today that no alarms went off on the day of the explosion because they had been "inhibited".

Sensors monitoring conditions on the rig and in the Macondo oil well beneath it were still working, but the computer had been instructed not to trigger any alarms in case of adverse readings.

Both visual and sound alarms should have gone off in the case of sensors detecting fire or dangerous levels of combustible or toxic gases.

The evidence of deliberate dilution of the rig's safety mechanisms is likely to have wide ramifications for BP and Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling company.

It switches the spotlight of blame away from BP and towards the subcontractor which took the decisions ...

Williams said he discovered that the physical alarm system had been disabled a full year before the disaster.

When he asked why, he said he was told that the view from even the most senior Transocean official on the rig had been that "they did not want people woken up at three o'clock in the morning due to false alarms" ...

Guardian  23 July 2010    Deepwater Horizon

BP admits it 'Photoshopped' official images

For the second time in two days, the company was identified to have doctored images posted on its official website that were supposed to show how it was responding to the oil crisis in America.

In the latest image, a photo taken inside a company helicopter appeared to show it flying off the coast near the damaged Bluewater Deepwater Horizon.

But it was later shown to be faked after internet bloggers identified several problems with the poorly produced image that contradicted the appearance that it was flying.

Among the problems identified included part of a control tower appearing in the top of the top right of the picture, different shades of colours, its pilot holding a pre-flight checklist and its control gauges showing the helicopter’s door and ramp open and its parking brake engaged ...

Telegraph  22 July 2010    Deepwater Horizon

BP accused of ignoring internal report of Deepwater leak

... while the capping of the well may be going well, developments onshore continued to prove what an enormous task BP faces in trying to repair its public image.

In Louisiana an investigative hearing into the leak heard testimony from a BP official who said the firm had ignored warnings ahead of the disaster.

Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, said he had reported a leak on a critical safety device at the rig to more senior company officials, but it seemed his warnings had not been passed on to the government regulating body, the Minerals Management Service.

"I assumed everything was OK, because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to the MMS," he told the hearing.

The leak was on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer on the rig, whose failure proved critical in causing the disaster ...

Guardian  20 July 2010    Deepwater Horizon

BP Oil Spills

Oil Spills

Hedge funds accused of gambling with lives of the poorest as food prices soar

• Commodity speculators push cocoa to 33-year high
• Bets 'risk the most vulnerable in the world starving'

The WDM's Great Hunger Lottery report says "risky and secretive" financial bets on food prices have exacerbated the effect of poor harvests in recent years. It argues that volatility in food prices has made it harder for producers to plan what to grow, pushed up prices for British consumers and in poorer countries risks sparking civil unrest, like the food riots seen in Mexico and Haiti in 2008.

Deborah Doane, WDM director, said: "Investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods. But this is leaving people in the UK out of pocket, and risks the poorest people in the world starving.

"Nobody benefits from this kind of reckless gambling except a few City wheeler-dealers. British consumers suffer because it pushes up inflation, because of unpredictable oil and raw material prices, and the world's poorest people suffer because basic foods become unaffordable."

Guardian  19 July 2010

Food Speculation

Executive Summary

Take the highest stakes, riskiest economic behaviour ever devised, and marry it to the most fundamental basic need of humankind, and you have the subject of this report.

Over the past decade, the world’s most powerful financial institutions have developed ever more elaborate ways to package, re-package and trade a range of financial contracts known as derivatives.

A derivative is not based on an exchange of tangible assets such as goods or money, but rather is a financial contract with a value linked to the expected future price movements of the underlying asset.

Derivative contracts are traded on a growing number of underlying assets, from share prices, to mortgages, bonds, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and even index of prices.

Derivatives trading has been one of the most lucrative parts of the financial industry, but it is the increasingly complex, opaque and disconnected nature of these and similar products that ultimately triggered the collapse of the banks and the worst financial crisis in human history.

Of course, the financial crisis has been an economic disaster of seismic proportions for millions around the world, plunging many countries into recession causing millions to be thrown out of work, soaring public debts and cuts in vital public services.

But while betting on the value of sub-prime mortgages or foreign currency values undoubtedly leads to disastrous consequences, there is another area where the speculative behaviour of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds represents a threat to the very survival of people: food commodities.

In The great hunger lottery, World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world.

This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.

Nowhere was this more clearly seen than during the astonishing surge in staple food prices over the course of 2007-2008, when millions went hungry and food riots swept major cities around the world.

The great hunger lottery shows how this alarming episode was fueled by the behaviour of financial speculators, and describes the terrible immediate impacts on vulnerable families around the world, as well as the long term damage to the fight against global poverty.

In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.

But at its heart, The great hunger lottery carries a very straightforward message: allowing gambling on hunger in financial markets is dangerous, immoral and indefensible.

And it needs to be stopped before any more people suffer to satisfy the greed of the banks.

WDM: Full Report .pdf  July 2010

Economic Democracy    Fractional Reserve Banking    'Golden Sacks'    Wealth Log

WDM

Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs: Annual Report .pdf

Goldman to pay $550m to settle SEC fraud case

Petty cash!

Goldman Sachs last night agreed to pay $550m (£356m) to settle the fraud charges that rocked the Wall Street giant, and admitted it had misled investors in one of the multi-billion dollar mortgage deals at the heart of the credit crisis.

The penalty was the largest ever extracted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street's regulator, but the sum was lower than some in the industry had feared, and Goldman shares surged on the news ...

No Goldman executives will lose their jobs as part of the settlement, and Lloyd Blankfein, the company's embattled chief executive, stays in place ...

The payment – which will be split $300m to the US government, $250m to compensate Abacus investors – is small compared with Goldman's profits.

The company earned $13.4bn in 2009, and $3.3bn in just the first three months of this year.

Independent  16 July 2010    'Doing God's Work'

Buncefield companies fined £5.35m for oil depot blaze

Peanuts!

Safety breaches by five firms including Total were responsible for blast that injured 43 and damaged homes and businesses ...

... the total bill for the five companies comes to £9.43m.

The fines are another blow to the reputation of the oil industry, hours after BP finally managed to cap its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.

But they are tiny in comparison to the profits made by oil companies such as Total, which had a net income of £1.94bn in the first three months of this year ...

... Mike Penning, Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, warned that today's fines were "loose change" to major oil companies.

"Legal justice might be done but not natural justice for a local community which is still fighting to win civil compensation claims," he said.

Guardian  16 July 2010    Corporate State Britain

Community struggles to rise from ashes of Buncefield fire

Will they be made to pay?

Now Cameron jilts the environment

Cameron's 'ethical' friends revealed

He is opening the oceans off the Shetland Islands to deep-sea drilling, and promising Big Oil tax breaks to drill, baby, drill ...

Cameron has put the man (Lord Browne) most to blame for the worst environmental disaster in living memory in charge of his cuts agenda, and appointed a man (David Rowland) who has faced accusations of wriggling out of cleaning up an environmental atrocity to run his party's finances ...

He commissioned another oil man, Tim Eggar, to go and ask the world's oil companies what they want from his government ...

But we know oil companies received big tax cuts in the Budget, and the Government's subsequent energy policy paper says life needs to be made "simpler [and] clearer" for oil companies to drill in British waters.

Even though it is our addiction to oil that is causing and worsening global warming, the paper says:

"We need policies designed for hunting [oil]... We need policies that offer the right incentives to explore for and extract the remaining reserves of oil and gas, and to keep existing fields open for as long as possible." ...

Independent  16 July 2010    David Cameron    Eating the Future

Why the former BP boss's new government job is beyond parody

How the Sun King sank BP

Ex-Bunker Hill exec enters British politics

The dirty past of the former tax exile who’s the new Tory Treasurer

Tim Eggar, former Energy Minister

Caring for one's country

Senate may investigate BP's role in release of Megrahi

The Secretary of State said she had received a letter from four Democrat senators alleging that BP put pressure on the Scottish government to release Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to help the company's efforts to win drilling licences put up for tender by Tripoli.

Megrahi was released in August last year after doctors in Scotland said he was suffering from developed prostate cancer and had just three months to live.

Reports from Libya suggest that his health has improved, and it is thought that he could now live for another decade.

"It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands," one of the senators, Frank Lautenberg, wrote in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ...

BP is expected to start drilling for oil in the Gulf of Sidra off Libya within the next two weeks after being granted concession rights in 2007.

Independent  15 July 2010    Deepwater Horizon

BP oil spill cap ready for testing

US moves to block new BP oil leases

Investors switch off ITV's Crozier

Adam Crozier's appointment early this year as chief executive of Coronation Street broadcaster ITV on a stonking contract that could see him earn more than £14million over the next five years left investors underwhelmed.

They obviously remembered his dire performance when head of the Football Association and the Royal Mail.

He has made enemies in-house after ordering 150 of his most senior staff to undergo ability and aptitude tests, but his big test as far as the City is concerned is just around the corner ...

Daily Mail   28 Jan 2010

The cheque's in the post: £2m bonus for departing Crozier

ITV could reward Adam Crozier with £14m pay and bonus package

From alpha mail to broadcasting mogul

Royal Mail rewarding Adam Crozier's 'failure'

Crozier's £100,000 pay rise... and his bonus is the same again

Adam on leave

Executive pay rises while shareholder earnings fall

The pay packages enjoyed by Britain's top directors are increasingly out of step with the actual performance of their companies, a report claims today.

Chief executives of FTSE 100 companies have seen their remuneration rise by 5% to an average of £3.1m since 2008, while earnings per share fell by 1% over the same period, according to the Total Remuneration 2010 survey by pay consultants MM&K and corporate governance group Manifest.

Over the past 10 years chief executive remuneration has quadrupled while share prices have declined, suggesting little or no link between rewards, performance and shareholder value, according to MM&K and Manifest.

The report said there had been a shift towards increasingly expensive, short term reward strategies, such as annual bonuses.

"This mirrors the approach that caused so many problems in the banking sector," it said. "Furthermore, as most remuneration strategies now involve the use of long term incentive plans, reward horizons have shortened to only three years. A decade ago, when share options were the favoured incentive, the horizon average was seven to ten years."

iaoutfls
5 Jul 2010, 8:31AM

There is a wider issue here which is that the major institutional shareholders (pension funds, etc) have been asleep on the job, not wanting any negative profile because they are more interested in getting new customers and money in.

The result is they have been failing to challenge management not just on pay but also proper stewardship of businesses versus a short term approach...look at the suggestions BP has been cutting corners on safety, the Pru's fortunately failed attempt to massively overpay for a huge acquisition, several misguided forays and over expansion by the banks ...

... it seems to me there is a strong argument for creating a framework that financially encourages long term ownership from the major institutions...even a 1% benefit in tax provided they held shares for a suitably long average period would obligate them to review the current churn approach where they actually hold shares for less time on average than private investors ...

Another obvious action is to make voting at AGMs compulsory for these institutions. this could easily be monitored via the FSA or its replacement.

The current system of non-binding votes on pay after the event is ludicrous ...

Guardian  05 July 2010

Former QinetiQ boss gets £1.1m golden goodbye

Graham Love, the former chief executive of QinetiQ, has received £1.1m in golden goodbye, performance payouts and consultancy fees despite being blamed by his successor for a financial crisis at the embattled defence technology group and presiding over an "insufficiently commercial" culture.

The cash and shares payouts came on top of salary and benefits of £430,000 Love earned in the seven months before his resignation last October, according to QinetiQ's annual report out today.

His pay has proved a constant source of controversy ever since the group's stock market flotation four years ago. He was awarded shares worth £21m when it joined the market, cashing in £6m a year later to fund a divorce. He is thought to retain about 5m shares, worth almost £6m.

Love's successor Leo Quinn, who received a golden hello of £600,000, last month suspended the dividend for 12 months, warning investors to expect two years of falling revenue and the 13,000 staff to prepare for job cuts of 10% ...

Guardian  25 June 2010

Treasury raises £257m in Qinetiq share sale

'Excessive' rewards for Qinetiq chiefs

MPs cry foul on MoD PFI

Qinetiq consortium wins bulk of £16bn MoD contract

Greed of the highest order

Inquiry launched into QinetiQ profiting

Qinetiq's £1bn flotation 'will sell taxpayer short'

Anger as £1.3bn float of Qinetiq gets away

Geeks With Guns

Ernst & Young faces inquiry over Lehman audit

The investigation follows an allegation in March by a US court-appointed examiner that E&Y – one of the world's "big four" accountancy firms – approved accountancy tactics that allowed the failed investment bank to hide $50bn (£33.7bn) of debt off its books ...

UK law firm Linklaters was also described as aiding the transfer of funds because it had said that the transactions were legal under English law. It denied any wrong-doing ...

"The E&Y fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg, of [problems caused by] the close relationship between the audit firm and its clients," Sikka said. "E&Y were aware of 'repo 105' – and auditors are more powerful than the police – they can examine anything, interview anybody without a court order; they already have the statutory right."

Accountancy firms, however, "are reliant on clients because of the fees; that influences what they are willing to do and say publicly, and all too often, bad news is buried," Sikka said.

The involvement of audit firms in big accounting scandals such as WorldCom and Enron, which put Arthur Andersen out of business, shows that "audit firms, simply can't deliver".

Because banks have a key role in the economy, they should be audited on a daily basis by the central bank or an official regulator, he said.

Guardian  16 June 2010    The Repo men ...

The Repo men must be stopped

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

"Afganistan ... has little or no history of environmental protection ... "

Welcome to the world of Bhopal and Deepwater Horizon, guys!

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe ...

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys ...

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine ...

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts.

Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank ...

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth ...

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection ...

NYT  13 June 2010    Afghanistan    Eating the Future    War on Terror Log

Superheroes and supervillains – why the cult of the CEO blinds us to reality

In which blogger needbeer gets to the heart of the matter

Many find it hard to sympathise with Hayward, especially after gaffes such as saying he would like to have his life back. Similarly, few will shed tears over the blame poured on errant bank bosses.

But according to Professor Julie Froud of Manchester Business School, this personal approach blinds us to deeper issues:

"President Obama is coming down very hard on Tony Hayward when he should also be looking at the whole issue of our energy use, which is of course much harder to address," she says.

"It is the same with the Treasury Select Committee hearings with the bankers, or the hearings in the US. It is justified to hold individuals to account, but it doesn't address the deeper problems in banking. The reality is that, in large organisations, success or failure just does not hang on any one individual."

needbeer
13 Jun 2010, 5:48PM

"...businessmen are idolised out of proportion to their real achievements;"

Affirmative. This is self-evident. "on the other, they are disproportionately blamed for the failures of the companies they lead."

Now this requires some examples and there are a few. However the handful of CEOs that have been vilified for the most part have also been handsomely rewarded for their perceived failings, with golden parachutes and such.

The problem as I see lies not in the individuals who lead the corporations for they were merely playing the game, and rather successfully judging from their positions.

No the problem lies in the rules of the game itself, the rules that define what a corporation is, its responsibilities, its liabilities, how it conduct itself, how it may continue to exist, etc.

It is time to re-examine the concept of incorporation and limited liability and decide if this arrangement is in the best interest of society generally.

JH Kunstler recently summed up the nature of the corporation nicely:

"...the fundamental character of corporations is sociopathic, insofar as their only express allegiance is to their shareholders, meaning they are devoid of any sense of the public interest..."

now if one agrees with these thoughts, then one must ask why are we continuing to grant corporations so much power and control over our lives and our governments?

Observer  13 June 2010    'Greed is Good'

Judge ... had shares in the oil industry

$20bn compensation and no BP dividends

BP credit rating slashed

Marks & Spencer chief's pay more than doubles to £4.3m

Sir Stuart Rose, who steps down as chief executive at the end of next month, rewarded with 140% increase in salary and bonuses despite lacklustre performance of group ...

The scale of the boardroom payouts is likely to further inflame M&S shareholders, some of whom have already made it known that they intend to vote against the M&S pay report in protest at the package handed to Marc Bolland, who will take over from Rose next month. Bolland could earn up to £15m in his first year, with £4.9m guaranteed, regardless of performance.

Over the past two years M&S's relationship with its shareholders has deteriorated, as the retailer has failed to comply with corporate governance guidelines and tested investors' patience with generous incentive schemes. Rose is due to hand control of the retail empire to Bolland at the end of July. At that point he will become part-time chairman, with a salary of £875,000 – making him the highest paid non-executive chairman of a FTSE 100 company. He is due to leave by the end of March next year.

In the annual report, remuneration committee chairman Steven Holliday, chief executive of National Grid, said Bolland's pay was designed to "attract and retain leaders who are focused and encouraged to deliver business priorities within a framework that is aligned with the interests of the company's shareholders".

Guardian  10 June 2010    Wealth Log

Anger over Obama block on Gulf of Mexico oil drilling after BP disaster

Time to find something else to go in the gas tank: like clean electricity and/or hydrogen

Gulf coast communities face loss of 46,000 jobs thanks to moratorium pending BP inquiry ...

A decision by Barack Obama to slap a block on deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has angered the energy industry and crisis-hit communities that rely on rigs for lucrative jobs.

In a move barely noticed by the public ... the White House ordered a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, pending new safety standards that will be drawn up by a special presidential commission charged with scrutinising the causes of the worst slick ever to blight America's oceans.

The move was applauded by environmentalists ... the Sierra Club, said the disaster was a wake-up call: "It's time to take offshore drilling off the table for good."

But the move comes at a cost. It will mean a halt to work on 33 drilling platforms, jeopardising as many as 46,000 jobs on land and sea, according to industry figures.

Those rigs, leased by oil companies at a typical cost of $500,000 a day (£340,000), are likely to be loaded onto ships and taken elsewhere – possibly to Brazil, India or the west coast of Africa, where wells are waiting to be drilled ...

ikesolem
9 Jun 2010, 5:37PM

A renewable energy industry would more than replace all those jobs - and what about the thousands of tourism and fishing related jobs that have been lost as the result of the spill?

For example: offshore wind turbines, algal biofuel production and refining, solar panel manufacturing and installation - all largely pollution-free, especially relative to deepwater blowouts.

The pay is similar, the work is less dangerous, and there is no risk of destroying the tourism and fishing industry - so don't listen to the lobbyists for fossil fuels who tell you there is no other alternative.

Guardian  09 June 2010    Deepwater Horizon    Peak Oil

$20bn compensation and no BP dividends

BP faces $34bn in fines

Experts double estimate of BP oil spill size

Slow-motion tragedy unfolds for marine life

Oil-affected wildlife

Obama orders six-month freeze on offshore drilling

Seven convicted over 1984 Bhopal gas disaster

Former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of causing death by negligence over disaster that killed at least 15,000 ...

An Indian court today convicted seven former senior employees of Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary of causing "death by negligence" over their part in the Bhopal gas tragedy in which an estimated 15,000 people died more than 25 years ago.

The subsidiary company, Union Carbide India Ltd, which no longer exists, was convicted of the same charge.

The former employees, many now in their 70s, face up to two years in prison. The judge has not yet announced sentences.

Large groups of survivors and relatives, along with rights activists, gathered in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in central India. They said the verdict was too little, too late.

On 3 December 1984, about 40 tonnes of deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant run by Union Carbide into the air in Bhopal, killing about 4,000 people.

The lingering effects of the poison increased the death toll to about 15,000 over the next few years, according to government estimates.

Local activists insist the actual toll is almost twice as high, and say the company and government have failed to clean up toxic chemicals at the plant, which closed after the incident ...

Union Carbide was bought by the Dow Chemical Co in 2001.

Dow says the legal case was resolved in 1989 when Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470m (£326m), and that all responsibility for the factory now rested with the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, which owns the site.

Guardian  07 June 2010    A Violent Aggressive Culture

Bhopal gas leak convictions not enough

Bhopal's secret disaster

Bhopal disaster

Bhopal

The World Cup kaleidoscope

Philippe: What is the World Cup really about? Money, pure and simple. This is a beanfest for global corporations.

The statistics on sponsorship, advertising, and merchandising are staggering.

The top fifteen sponsors – McDonalds, Budweiser, NTT, Gillette, the usual suspects – will pay FIFA, the world governing body, £375 million to display their images at the tournament.

Adidas is paying ten teams around £60 million to wear their products. And the money is not just decoration – it has colonised the very soul of the game.

Brazil is a franchise of Nike.

When injuries to key players are discussed – Ronaldo in 1998, Zidane in 2002 – the sponsors are in the wings, pulling the strings.

It used to be a game. It’s now a global business ...

openDemocracy  June 2010

The World Cup kaleidoscope

Homeless South Africans getting moved out of major cities ahead of 2010 World Cup

Tackle poverty in South Africa

London ... Olympic spirit ... kicking out the Gypsies

BP hives off 'toxic' Gulf spill operation

Responsibility for the leaking well and the clean-up strategy will placed in the hands of Bob Dudley, one of the company's most able directors.

Dudley, a US citizen, has been looking for a suitable role in the company since he was thrown out of Moscow in a battle with the Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP joint venture in the middle of 2008.

Hayward said the clean-up business would be run separately by Dudley with his own staff but the finances and budget would come from the main BP group.

The BP chief executive said the purpose of the split was to allow Dudley to concentrate on the Gulf problem while he and other directors were not distracted from keeping the main business on track ...

Guardian  04 June 2010    Deepwater Horizon

$20bn compensation and no BP dividends

Obama: BP chief would be fired if he was working for me

BP will pay 'many billions of dollars in fines' for oil spill

BP's Deepwater Horizon costs hit $1.25bn

It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Rig

BP fails to rule out cut in dividend

BP chief executive apologises for Gulf oil spill

Another Torrent BP Works to Stem: Its C.E.O.

BP, already bedeviled by an out-of-control well spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, now finds itself with one more problem: Tony Hayward, its gaffe-prone chief executive ...

Mr. Hayward, 53, ascended to the top job when his predecessor, John Browne, resigned after a personal scandal and a series of major accidents. Mr. Hayward promised to refocus the company culture on safety ...

The company has enlisted the help of the Brunswick Group, a public relations and crisis management firm, to deal with the accident.

It has dedicated the home page of its Web site, BP.com, to the crisis and taken out full-page advertisements in major newspapers.

BP has also hired a new head of media relations in the United States, Anne Womack Kolton, who worked at Brunswick and is a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Department spokeswoman ...

NYT  03 June 2010    Deepwater Horizon

Plan for Relief Wells Spurs Hope Amid Caution

Report condemns swine flu experts' ties to big pharma

WHO in grip of Big Pharma

An investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit, shows that WHO guidance issued in 2004 was authored by three scientists who had previously received payment for other work from Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of Relenza ...

The UK, which warned that 65,000 could die as a result of the virus, spent an estimated £1bn stockpiling drugs and vaccines; officials are now attempting to unpick expensive drug contracts.

The cabinet office has launched an inquiry into the cost to the taxpayer of the panic-buying of drugs.

Today, the Council of Europe, produces a damning report into how a lack of openness around "decision making" has bedevilled planning for pandemics.

"The tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels in the decision-making process," said Paul Flynn, the Labour MP who sits on the council's health committee. "It must be right that the WHO is transparent because there has been distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money and provocation of unjustified fear."

Although the experts consulted made no secret of industry ties in other settings, declaring them in research papers and at universities, the WHO itself did not publicly disclose any of these in its seminal 2004 guidance.

In its note, the WHO advised: "Countries that are considering the use of antivirals as part of their pandemic response will need to stockpile in advance." ...

Guardian  04 June 2010    Corporate State Britain

BP to go ahead with $10bn shareholder payout

Tony Hayward to defy calls from politicians to cancel dividend until Deepwater Horizon oil spill is resolved ...

Guardian  03 June 2010    

BP lacked the right tools to deal with crisis

It's the dividend, folks. Nothing else matters!

Hayward told the Financial Times it was "entirely fair" to criticise BP for not being better equipped to fight a leak 5,000 feet below the surface.

He said the oil giant needed to develop new techniques for such crises, rather than using decades-old methods.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your toolkit," said Hayward in an interview with the FT.

His comments came as US politicians demanded that BP should suspend dividend payments to shareholders while it battles the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an open letter to Hayward – who recently told the Guardian his job was on the line – Democratic senators Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden said it would be wrong for BP to pay investors a dividend until it knows the full cost of the disaster ...

Shares in BP rose by over 4% this morning to 448p, indicating that traders remain confident that the the annual dividend will be paid ...

Guardian  03 June 2010    Corporate Sociopathy Log    Deepwater Horizon

Will Deepwater sink the 101-year-old BP?

Delays in sealing oil pipe fan doubts over BP's survival

The previous chief executive of BP, Lord Browne of Madingley, revealed in a recent autobiography entitled Beyond Business that he took BP to the brink of a merger with Shell six years ago only to be thwarted at the last minute by opposition from a handful of his own board members. "We missed the boat. We estimated that a merger could create synergies of around $9bn a year in three to five years' time."

But there were also reports that Hayward had held similar discussions in 2007 when BP's share price had been weakened by the Texas City refinery fire, in which 15 workers died. The plunging value of BP is a blow to British pension funds as it is estimated to provide £1 in every £7 paid in dividends by FTSE-100 companies.

BP is also a big provider of revenue to the exchequer. It said last night that it paid $6.3bn in global corporate income tax, of which $1.1bn (£690m) was in the UK. BP expects to pay about $4bn in 2009 in production taxes globally, of which £130m would be in Britain.

Duncan Exley, of lobby organisation FairPensions, cautioned investors: "Social and corporate governance issues have a history of precipitating crises which damage our economy and our investments."

Guardian  02 June 2010    Deepwater Horizon

Moody’s staff pressured to give high ratings

Ratings analysts were bullied by their bosses into giving top scores to risky mortgage products, executives from Moody’s Investors Service told a US government inquiry into the financial crisis.

Speaking at a hearing in New York of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the analysts described a culture of fear at the ratings agency, which has been accused of helping to fuel the financial crisis by putting triple-A ratings on mortgage products that did not deserve them.

Eric Kolchinsky, a former managing director at Moody’s US derivatives business, told the hearing that Moody’s bosses, desperate to increase the company’s market share, forced analysts to rate a huge volume of mortgage-related products even if they did not have sufficient time to analyse them properly.

“It was very clear to me that my future at the firm and my compensation would be based on the market share,” he said ...

Times  03 June 2010

Wall Street bullied us

EU plans regulator for rating agencies

Buffett bats off criticism of Moody’s

Buffett: 'it's easy to be wise after the event'

Rating agencies

Back to Blog

LSE chief attacks short-selling ban as 'misguided' and 'counterproductive'

The chief executive of the London Stock Exchange has launched a stinging attack on the German government's unilateral decision to ban so-called "naked" short-selling in some financial stocks and bonds.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper, Xavier Rolet described the ban as a "mistaken decision that risks having an effect which is the opposite of what is desired".

He continued: "I would, in fact, suggest to eliminate the ban. And then to construct market infrastructure that helps investors. Markets are global: you can't think of acting unilaterally because it would be counterproductive." ...

Independent  31 May 2010    Blog    Economic Democracy    Fractional Reserve Banking

BP oil rig registration raised in Congress

Political ripples from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster have travelled as far as the north Pacific, where authorities of the remote Marshall Islands have been found to be the ones technically responsible for scrutinising safety standards on the doomed BP rig.

The rig, which was owned by Transocean, but under lease to BP when it exploded and sank on 20 April, is regarded as an ocean-going vessel in legal terms.

In common with 34 other Transocean oil rigs, Deepwater Horizon was registered under the flag of convenience of the Marshall Islands ... (which) ... means the Marshall Islands' shipping registry was responsible for ensuring compliance with quality standards for construction, equipment and operation on the rig ... (it) ... is also obliged to investigate any accidents that occur on its maritime vessels, including the loss of the Deepwater Horizon ...

Questions have been raised in the US Congress about why Transocean registers its rigs in a country 7,000 miles from Washington with a gross domestic product of $133m – 700 times less than BP's market capitalisation ...

Guardian  30 May 2010    Deepwater Horizon

Billions more wiped from BP's value as shares plunge

BP to promise $10bn payday

How much worse can it get for BP?

Deep Underwater, Oil Threatens Reefs

A Waiting Game for Fishermen

BP's management faces an immense challenge

Rising Cleanup Costs and Numerous Lawsuits Rattle BP’s Investors

BP's clumsy response to oil spill

US reveals criminal probe over BP spill

BP oil rig registration raised in Congress

What was Halliburton's role in US oil spill?

Honour among thieves?

As the investigation into the BP oil rig explosion accelerates, new information has been surfacing in congressional hearings in Washington pointing to possible problems with the casings that were put around the bore hole in the sea bed and the cementing that is critical to sealing it up.

Halliburton did the cementing at the well, under contract to BP. It was to inject the cement to seal the casing in the bore hole to make any seepage of gas and oil impossible, and insert the cement plug that would have allowed BP to return at a later date to begin production.

Last August, Halliburton was involved in the cementing of a well in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia that similarly blew out, sending thousands of gallons into the ocean ...

The notion that blame for the blast could eventually be put on Halliburton might be tempting for BP. Indeed, at early hearings, BP seemed to point fingers both at Halliburton and at Transocean ... prompting a rebuke from President Obama.

From the start, Halliburton's lawyers have insisted that its men on the rig were simply following specifications and instructions from BP ...

Transocean has made a similar case that as the owner of the lease on the well, BP must be ultimately responsible.

Independent  30 May 2010    Deepwater Horizon

Documents Show Early Worries About Safety of Rig

Oil spill creates huge undersea 'dead zones'

BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Oil Well Before Blast

Several days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options, according to a BP document.

The concern with the method BP chose, the document said, was that if the cement around the casing pipe did not seal properly, gases could leak all the way to the wellhead, where only a single seal would serve as a barrier.

Using a different type of casing would have provided two barriers, according to the document, which was provided to The New York Times by a Congressional investigator.

Workers from the rig and company officials have said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement, which had been set in place by the oil services contractor, Halliburton.

Investigators have said these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion ...

NYT  26 May 2010

Panel Suggests Signs of Trouble Before Rig Explosion

Washington and BP -- 'Like a Junkie Controlling His Dealer'

Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead

Agency Orders Use of a Less Toxic Chemical in Gulf

Kraft rebuked for broken pledge on Cadbury factory

US food group Kraft censured by Takeover Panel for going back on promise to keep Cadbury's Somerdale factory open

Guardian  26 May 2010    

Lazard man in Kraft spotlight is right to exit

Total cost of new regulations reached £90bn under Labour

The give-away here is our old friend the working-time directive, that bete-noir of Davos Man, who would like to put everyone on 'agency' working terms, and to hell with the Miniscule Wage.

The total cost to businesses of regulations introduced by the Government last year was £1bn, consisting of 40 restrictions.

Among the most costly of these laws is the EU Light Duty Vehicle Emissions Standards, which has a recurring annual cost to business of £1.48bn.

But the most costly of all the laws since 1998 are Working Time Regulations, which have cost businesses a cumulative £17.8bn, and a 2000 EU pollution directive, which cost £10.4bn ...

Telegraph  24 May 2010

Red tape costs businesses £77 billion over last decade

Deepwater Horizon survivor describes horrors of blast and escape from rig

These things Stephen Davis cannot banish from his memory from that night of chaos aboard the Deepwater Horizon: the sensation of being flung into a wall by a powerful explosion, the desperate, muddy scramble on a deck lit only by the reflections from a huge pillar of flame; the look in men's eyes before they jumped 18 metres into the water ...

For Davis, the events of that night, when the rig exploded killing 11 of the 126 crew, was only the beginning of his ordeal.

He says he and other survivors were to spend the next 40 hours in isolation – barred from phoning their families – while his lawyers believe Transocean, the owners of the rig, readied its legal defences. Seventeen crew members were seriously injured in the incident ...

LostintheUS
20 May 2010, 9:55PM

You folks have heard of the Gulf Stream, right? As soon as those submerged and floating oil masses round up the Atlantic coastline of Florida, they will be drawn into the Gulf Stream.

And where does the Gulf Stream end up?

The UK.

Most of the world's oil skimming equipment should be in the Gulf of Mexico right now.

One of my relatives retired from the engineering petroleum field and used to work for BP. He said BP is clearly to blame.

Here is an excerpt from today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

"BP hired a top oilfield service company to test the strength of cement linings on the Deepwater Horizon's well, but sent the firm's workers home 11 hours before the rig exploded April 20 without performing a final check that a top cementing company executive called "the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness" of the well's seal.

A spokesman for the testing firm, Schlumberger, said BP had a Schlumberger team and equipment for sending acoustic testing lines down the well "on standby" from April 18 to April 20. But BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen T. Harris said.

At a few minutes before 10 p.m., a belch of natural gas shot out of the well, up a riser pipe to the rig above, igniting massive explosions, killing 11 crewmembers and sending millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf. The rig's owner, Transocean, blames failed cement seals, installed by Halliburton, for the disastrous blowout."

No mystery here, folks. BP made the decision not to conduct the time-consuming final acoustic test. And Halliburton was using an experimental cement for the cement seal.

Guardian  20 May 2010    Eating the Future

Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals

As the housing crisis mounted in early 2007, Goldman Sachs was busy selling risky, mortgage-related securities issued by its longtime client, Washington Mutual, a major bank based in Seattle.

Although Goldman had decided months earlier that the mortgage market was headed for a fall, it continued to sell the WaMu securities to investors. While Goldman put its imprimatur on that offering, traders in the same Goldman unit were not so sanguine about WaMu’s prospects: they were betting that the value of WaMu’s stock and other securities would decline.

Goldman’s wager against its customer’s stock — a position known as a “short” — was large enough that it would have generated at least $10 million in profits if WaMu collapsed, according to documents recently released by Congress. And by mid-May, Goldman’s bet against other WaMu securities had made Goldman $2.5 million, the documents show.

WaMu eventually did collapse under the weight of souring mortgage loans; federal regulators seized it in September 2008, making it the biggest bank failure in American history.

Goldman’s bets against WaMu, wagers that took place even as it helped WaMu feed a housing frenzy that Goldman had already lost faith in, are examples of conflicting roles that trouble its critics and some former clients ...

NYT  18 May 2010    Goldman Sachs

Oil is sinking amid 'oceans of public debt'

The Torygraph is concerned lest the Gulf oil spill should lead to 'tighter regulation'

The long-term risk is in the potential for harsher industry-wide regulations, both in the US and other oil-producing nations ...

For example, the intense focus on the quality of the sunken rig’s safety valve – its blowout preventer – makes it likely that a more expensive remote activation button will become compulsory at a cost of $500,000 (£343,000) per well.

In addition to extra safety devices, there is expected to be more paperwork plus higher insurance premiums.

There is also the prospect of pecuniary punishment from President Obama’s team, which has grown increasingly frustrated with BP’s inability to stop the leak.

In return for the bad publicity, it could well end the industry’s $36.5bn in tax breaks and hand subsidies over to eco-friendly wind or biofuel projects.

Edward Morse, an analyst at Credit Suisse, has estimated that a tightening of regulations will “potentially raise the cost of finding and developing a barrel of oil in deep water by 10pc to 15pc, or $5 to $10 a barrel. We don’t expect anything to impede drilling entirely, just delay it and potentially raise costs.” ...

Telegraph  16 May 2010

Danger for Florida

BP insists oil spill impact 'very modest'

Bankers plot guaranteed bonuses to beat budget tax

The City is lining up to defend itself from any further attack on pay, which bankers argue will kill London’s ability to compete as a global financial centre.

Senior bankers at a number of the City’s biggest institutions have started to work on plans to get round any new taxes.

If they offer legally-binding guarantees on bonuses before the new measures are announced the payments are likely to escape censure, the bankers believe ...

Times  16 May 2010

We need Roubini's brains if we want banking reform

Working out what our bank system should look like, and whether it should be split between narrow and casino banks, is so complex that we need brains like Roubini's to help see more clearly.

Reformers will also need to have pretty robust arguments because any attempts here and in the US to break up the banks will bring down the wrath of the most powerful vested interests in the world, who will fight tooth and nail to defend their privileges and their bonuses.

As his book warns, a return to some sort of Glass-Steagall structure doesn't go far enough.

He's right when he recommends breaking up the Too Big To Fail banks – Bank of America, UBS, RBS, JP Morgan, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas for starters – with antitrust laws, just as the US did with the oil titans and AT&T.

That's why our new commission must look at whether the big investment banks are an oligopoly.

We need to know how the banks make so much money – whether from cartels that set underwriting fees or from colluding on advisory charges.

Indeed some critics even ask whether many trading profits are ficticious ...

... breaking up the banks will only work if there is global agreement, as John Kay, the champion of narrow banking, says, there are only one and a half countries which matter – the US and the UK ...

Independent  16 May 2010    FRB

Fiat Currency

No way back to status quo Cable tells banks

Bankers' earnings surge towards pre-crash levels

Pay and bonuses totalled £20.5bn in four months to April, compared with £24bn at height of boom in 2007 ...

The steep rise in earnings is likely to put pressure on the coalition government to impose a clampdown on City pay practices, which the Liberal Democrats in particular attacked while in opposition.

Guardian analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics shows that bankers were paid £8.5bn in bonuses in the four months to April, compared with £7bn during the same period last year.

There was also a jump in pay across the industry of £1bn to £12bn as bankers shifted some of their earnings away from bonuses to avoid the former Labour government's bonus tax ...

Guardian  13 May 2010    Fractional Reserve Banking    Economic Democracy    Wealth Log

Sweatshop girl

As part of a series assessing whether Bangladesh is on track to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the BBC's Alastair Lawson visits a safety pin factory in the capital, Dhaka, which employs children.

The electricity supply in the sweatshop in the crowded part of old Dhaka where Asma, 10, makes safety pins for a living is so dangerous that the foreman can only turn on the lights using a broomstick.

"If I use my hands I may get an electric shock," he explains.

Asma is one of about 10 workers in the dingy factory - in the heart of the crowded and maze-like alleyways of this part of the city - who are under 14 ...

Asma usually arrives at work at eight in the morning and leaves at eight in the evening. She often works six days a week and is paid about $2 a day ...

Asma explains that as one of six children in her family she and her siblings have no choice but to work. Her father is a bicycle rickshaw puller and does not earn enough money to feed his family ...

BBC NEWS  10 May 2010    WEF Davos

Meeting Millennium Development Goals

Dow Jones insanity shows the need to regulate the murky world of dark pools

We don't know all the causes yet of Thursday's bout of insanity on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but this much is clear: regulators have lost control of the equity market ... big buyers can go hunting for sellers (and vice versa) without having to reveal their hand.

It makes a mockery of the claim that published stock prices reflect the balance of supply and demand at any given moment.

It is because of the sheer lack of transparency that these off-exchange trading platforms are called "dark pools". There are more than three dozen alternative trading pools in the US now ...

The traders themselves long ago stopped being actual humans. More than half of all share trades in the US are now done by computer programmes, and the proportion is rising exponentially.

These black-box programmes are designed to trade at very high frequency, using impenetrable mathematical models to spot supposed trading patterns and eke out tiny profits, multiple times a second ...

The SEC recently – belatedly – began (the) review of high-frequency trading and dark pools.

It is difficult to be optimistic that it will get its head round all these issues.

This is the same SEC that couldn't catch Bernard Madoff when he was using an archaic computer to fabricate thousands of trades ...

Independent  08 May 2010    Economic Democracy    Fractional Reserve Banking

Origin of Wall Street’s Plunge Continues to Elude Officials

Oil spill puts survival of BP at stake

As a high-stakes operation to shut off a blown-out oil well unfolded on the seabed and a 130-mile wide slick menaced the coastline of four US states, a top US official was warning that the survival of BP as a company was under threat ...

The leak, which is spewing more than 200,000 gallons a day — or 2.5 million gallons since the blowout two weeks ago — has overtaken the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in terms of volume ...

The disaster has not daunted big oil. Shell urged an appeals court in Oregon to allow it to drill in the Arctic, countering a challenge by environmentalists.

The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association admitted that while it expects to be hit with tighter safety regulations, the industry must stand firm.

“We don’t stop because we’ve run up against the wall,” Don Briggs, its president, said. “There are 250 million vehicles in this country and 96 per cent of them run on oil.”

Times  08 May 2010

BP insists oil spill impact 'very modest'

Obama: No more cosying up to oil industry

An Exxon Valdez every four days

Tread carefully, Mr Obama. You need big oil

Goldman Sachs boss faces an ambush at the AGM

In the absence of economic democracy, CEO's like Lloyd "I'm doing God's work" Blankfein can put two fingers up to "shareholder proposals" safe in the knowledge that fellow corporate investors will remain on side, on the understanding that the new "business standards committee" is empty corporate spin. This, after all, is the firm that worked both for the Greek government, and against it. All in the interests of corporate profit.

He once joked that Goldman Sachs was “doing God’s work”, but yesterday Lloyd Blankfein came face-to-face with the Lord’s representatives on Earth.

A stream of Christian shareholders held him to account at the bank’s annual meeting in Manhattan, exhorting him to work “for the many, not just the few” ...

In hopes of deflecting further criticism from shareholders and the wider world, which he knew would be watching the meeting closely, Mr Blankfein said that Goldman would create a new business standards’ committee to conduct a comprehensive review of business practices at the firm and come up with recommendations to the board ...

Mr Blankfein looked remarkably more relaxed throughout than he did during his recent grilling by the US Senate.

He responded politely but rejected all shareholder proposals.

By the end, he looked unbowed, but relieved all the same that he had successfully got through another day in the spotlight at the Goldman Sachs circus.

Times  08 May 2010        Economic Democracy    Goldman Sachs

Water companies sit silent in a pool of dirty secrets

Things can only get worse

... it does worry me when no less an authority than Dr Tom Pickerell, director of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain, says he is concerned that the chance of eating a bad oyster may be rising — although I must emphasise that the risk is still vanishingly low.

What is worrying his members is the norovirus, or winter vomiting bug.

This virus was identified as being responsible for the outbreak of food poisoning that affected 529 people last year at the Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, regularly named as one of the best in the world.

The norovirus is found in human sewage. It happens to have been found in the beds in the Colne estuary run by the Colchester Oyster Fishery, which supplied the Fat Duck ...

The question that concerns Graham Larkin, operations director of the fishery, which also supplies the Ritz, Le Gavroche and Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, is how sewage was allowed into some of the most famous oyster beds in the world.

You might think this was the kind of thing that kept the Environment Agency and the local water company awake at night.

Think again ...

Times  02 May 2010

Troubled Waters

BP’s hapless and obfuscatory response to the spill casts a pall on two reputations. The first is the company’s.

BP depicts itself as a force for clean energy and a greener world, yet it has produced an emerging environmental catastrophe whose effects it underestimated and whose dangers it failed to communicate.

The second is that of Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive.

To his credit, Mr Hayward immediately grasped the potential catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. He flew promptly to Houston, he summoned a huge containment operation and, rather than engage in an effort to lay the blame on Transocean, which was running the Deepwater Horizon operation, he squarely assumed BP’s responsibility for the disaster.

Yet faced with a human tragedy and ecological disaster, he has appeared dilatory and ineffectual. Eleven people died in the initial explosion on the rig, huge stretches of American coastline and marshland are threatened, and marine life is at risk.

Mr Hayward has been co-ordinating the company’s containment operation. In that task he has been neither effective nor visible.

BP initially estimated the leak of crude oil from the damaged rig amounted to 1,000 barrels a day. It took nine days for the company to admit that this was a serious underestimate, and that the true figure was five times that amount ...

Times  02 May 2010    Peak Oil

Deepwater Horizon oil spill sparks calls for ... drilling ban

BP profits jump after oil price rise

BP profits jump after oil price rise

"We still need oil and gas" Manouchehr Takin tells The Guardian. And there's the problem: as demand expands, the need to replace these two finite resources with sustainable substitutes becomes more imperative. Instead, the search is directed at finding gas and oil reserves in "more hostile and challenging environments", probably because no current form of 'renewables' will replace the multiplicity of jobs which gas and oil perform.

BP has smashed City forecasts with a 135% jump in profits, thanks to rising oil prices.

The energy giant reported profits of $5.6bn (£3.6bn) in the first three months of 2010, up from $2.4bn a year ago ...

Guardian  27 Apr 2010

Oil rig sinking puts 'bad boy' industry in spotlight again

Deepwater Horizon disaster reflects the increasing danger in extracting reserves from more and more hostile environments ...

The Gulf of Mexico accident has once again focused attention on the industry's safety record as oil companies drill ever deeper and in more hostile and challenging environments.

Although figures for global safety show improvement in recent years, the data masks some worrying trends.

In 2008, the most recent data available from the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), the injury rate for workers involved in exploring for oil and gas was one-third higher than the average for the previous five years; in Africa this rate was four times higher.

With companies pushing the boundaries of exploration to regions such as northern Siberia, it is no surprise that fatality rates are on the rise.

Exploration is particularly risky because it often involves drilling in areas which have not been mapped, so little is known about the geology and about any hydrocarbons lying beneath the seabed.

... Manouchehr Takin of the Centre for Global Energy Studies said:

"Perhaps I'm biased. But accidents like this one will amplify the image of the industry as a bad boy. That is unfair, I think. We still need oil and gas."

Guardian  26 Apr 2010    Peak Oil Log

They wait for oil. But the sea brings death instead

Schwarzenegger turns against oil drilling

Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion

Natural gas reserves

Goldman trader’s email slur

In a series of damaging emails released yesterday, Tourre also compared the products to a “Frankenstein” monster that had “turned against his own inventor”.

Other emails that emerged yesterday showed Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, boasting about the money the bank made from the housing market collapse.

“Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” Blankfein wrote in November 2007. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts (bets against housing).” ...

Meanwhile, it has emerged that five senior directors of Goldman Sachs, including Michael Sherwood, the co-head of its London office, sold shares in the bank after the SEC first warned that it may take action over the fraud claims. The watchdog issued a “Wells” notice, an official warning, in July last year.

The executives sold shares worth $65.4m between October 2009 and last February. Goldman’s shares dropped almost 13% after the SEC claim was filed in court 10 days ago ...

Royal Bank of Scotland has been ordered to hand over thousands of emails and documents to the SEC as part of an investigation into its sub-prime mortgage business in America.

RBS, which is 84% owned by taxpayers, yesterday confirmed that it had been under investigation for more than two years.

RBS, through its Greenwich Capital subsidiary in the US, controlled about 6.2% of the market for collateralised debt obligations ...

Times  25 Apr 2010    Fractional Reserve Banking

Goldman Cited ‘Serious’ Profit on Mortgages

Goldman Sachs

Fabrice Tourre defends his 'Frankenstein products'

US banks pouring millions into bid to kill Barack Obama's finance reform bill