Piper was a vast inferno visible for miles. ibid.
The offer from oil giant Texaco would ultimately be successful. The sale of Getty Oil for $10 billion would be the biggest corporate take-over in history. Gettys: The World’s Richest Art Dynasty, BBC 2018
On 6th July 1988 devastating explosions and fire destroyed the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea. Piper Alpha will always be remembered for the scale of the human tragedy, but more than 20 years on my attention has been drawn to another lesser known aspect of the disaster … pollution from Piper Alpha … the fate of five tons of toxic PCB chemicals that had been on board the platform. Document: 16/08/2010, BBC Radio 4
‘The world price of petroleum has quadrupled in the last year.’ Gashole, 2008, Gerald Ford (1975)
America is more dependent now than ever on foreign supplies of energy. Is there any solution to this problem? ibid.
‘A man came to the airfield one day with a 1946 Buick Roadmaster. He had invented a carburettor that was water-injected and could get close to 100 miles per gallon. He told us that Shell Oil company had bought the patent from him which made him a millionaire. They told him he could keep the one on this Buick but he could build no more … What ever happened to this invention?’ ibid. Ken Kunde, witness
Did Shell oil really bury this technology? ibid.
200 Miles on Two Gallons of Gas. ibid. El Paso Times headline May 1 1977
Why would oil companies keep resisting better technology? ibid.
Instead of punishing Standard Oil executives, the break up made them even more money. ibid.
In 1893 Rudolf Diesel invents an engine that runs on peanut oil. He then dies mysteriously and we’re told his engines only run on petroleum. ibid.
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. Alan Greenspan
Blix Says War Motivated By Oil. Associated Press
What they leave out are several other things. One is that Saddam Hussein was CIA. He was put in by the CIA. And CIA backed Saddam’s right-wing of the Ba’ath Party, and the Ba’ath Party went and murdered every democrat, every progressive, every communist that was in Iraq. And then went and murdered the left wing of their own party. So they killed, tortured these people. They did all that. It’s true what they say about him that he did do these terrible things. What they leave out is that when he was doing them he was Washington’s poster boy. And they couldn’t have more praise for him. But then he turned round and did something else. And that was he nationalised the oil reserves. Michael Parenti
When Operation Desert Storm was launched in early 1991 … I reminded myself just how greedy the superpowers of the world had become for crude oil. Tony Robinson, Britain’s Forgotten Wars I: A Storm in the Desert, Channel 4 2021
For more than 150 years oil and gas has played a critical role in our society, improving human lives, raising standards of living and enabling unprecedented economic growth. Big Oil vs The World I, dude, BBC 2022
More than 40 years ago, oil industry scientists warned that burning fossil fuels would change climate change. ibid. caption
This is the story of how Big Oil went on to fool the world. ibid.
This campaign of denial brought the industry thirty-plus extra years of profit at the expense of the planet. ibid. dude
Exxon: By the 90s they were the kingpins of denial. ibid. curator
Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate: Sharp Cut in Burning of Fossil Fuels is Urged to Battle Shift in Climate. ibid. The New York Times June 24 1988
The Global Climate Coalition is seeding doubt everywhere. Sort of fogging the air with these counter-arguments. ibid.
They made a deeply unethical decision. Big Oil vs The World II, Al Gore
In 1998 there was this meeting in Washington DC. It’s convened by the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon is in the room, Chevron …they are hatching plans to stop people worrying about climate change … A wide and concerted effort to install uncertainty around climate science. ibid.
The new millennium began with an historic US presidential election. Both candidates pledged to tackle climate change. ibid.
Bush won the contest having promised to introduce a national limit on America’s carbon dioxide emissions. ibid.
Vice-President Dick Cheney had previously headed Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil-service operations. ibid.
Five months into his presidency, George Bush had adopted the oil industry line of emphasising the uncertainty of climate science. ibid.
‘History’s biggest merger … Exxon Mobile will be the biggest oil company in the world. 123,000 employees.’ ibid. news
‘Exxon was a ringleader. And they were at the centre of the campaigns that were around in the late ’90s, early 2000s, to stall climate policy.’ ibid. Kert Davies
‘Exxon Mobile tried to control the discussion in the United States.’ ibid. old boy
Exxon Mobile continued to promote doubt and uncertainty about climate science. ibid.
As the science and the warnings became more urgent, some of the fossil fuel industry’s most reliable allies started having doubts. ibid.
BP was now making record profits from oil and gas. ibid.
But the scientific warnings were becoming ever more urgent. ibid.
The Koch brothers poured money into to the effort to kill the bill. ibid.
It’s a hoax. Big Oil vs The World III, Trump
More than 40 years ago, oil industry scientists warned that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. ibid. caption
There are massive fracking booms happening in Texas, North Dakota … Pennsylvania … ibid. news
After years of further research the industry perfected a method of fracturing rock and horizontal drilling – fracking. ibid.
ExxonMobile became America’s biggest gas producer. ibid.
Gulf of Mexico, 20th April 2010: ‘An explosion ripped through the living quarters … immediately the blare of sirens going off.’ Inferno at Sea: The Deepwater Disaster, worker, Channel 5 2022
41 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico sits the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Owned by the company Transocean, and commissioned by BP, she is the pride of the fleet. ibid.
‘It got the reputation of being called the Well from Hell.’ ibid. engineer
Separate safety checks disagree on whether the concrete seal is insecure. ibid.
A huge explosion of oil and gas has ripped through the Deepwater Horizon setting the drilling rig ablaze and putting its 126 crew members in mortal danger. ibid.
The captain has ordered all crew to abandon ship. ibid.
As the hours pass the oil slick on the surface continues to grow. ibid.
The oil dispersant is a controversial chemical called Corexit. It’s toxic and it’s known to be a danger to health of both humans and wildlife. ibid.
Modern agriculture has been accurately described as a way of turning oil into food. As the price of oil continues to rise, so will the price of food. Jeremy Grantham
The Conservatives’ boom had turned sour. It had led to inflation and industrial violence. And in November the Arab oil price rise pushed the market over the edge. It fell further than in the crash of 1929. The politicians now turned on the tycoons. When Rowland’s corrupt methods were revealed, Edward Heath publicly called him ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’. And Goldsmith was now seen as a greedy spiv who had torn British industry apart to make himself a fortune. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set IV: Twilight of the Dogs
In a system that puts profits over everything, small gangs of billionaires are given free reign to plunder the planet. Abby Martin & The Empire Files: The Tyranny of Big Oil aka Untouchable Big Oil Threatens All Life on Earth, Abby Martin online 2016
In the United States the oil industry is a giant cash-engorged beast with the loyal servitude of the state at its beck and call. ibid.
The oil industry’s vast power was pioneered by the son of a snake oil salesman: John D Rockefeller. ibid.
April 20th 2010: One of BP’s deep-water rigs exploded and unleashed 210 million gallons of toxic sludge into the eco system. ibid.
The spills by cost-cutting Big Oil have only continued, and they are seemingly rewarded for their actions. ibid.
Standard Oil: When anything threatened total dependency on oil they went after it. ibid.
Oil now regulated the government … It stands shielded from regulation. ibid.