Go Beyond Oil

Cairn Energy has fired the starting guns on its 2011 Arctic drilling operation.

Their plan is to lug a couple of massive rigs up to the icy waters around Greenland and drill four exploratory holes in the seabed.

From Chevron to Shell, Nigeria to the North Sea, the slippery mask of big oil was briefly removed this week.

On Tuesday we learned from a leaked internal company report that Transocean – the operators of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig – had a partial “blow-out” on one of its North Sea rigs only months before the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe.

We've taken the government to the High Court in a bid to stop offshore drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Our lawyers filed a claim at the Royal Courts of Justice this morning seeking to stop the issuing of new licences for deep sea drilling until the causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion have been properly established.

Why are car companies hiding their progress? Photo: drinksmachine

It's not often you see car companies trying to hide their green achievements. We're more used to seeing them worn boastfully on the outside. The way Superman wears his underpants.

So why would they hide them now?

The Corporate Social Responsibility guys must be choking on their almond croissants. Today's news is something they want to shout about: fast, tangible progress on vehicle efficiency technology that reduces emissions. Greener cars, greener company. This time they don't have to make it up. But they're being hushed up by the lobbyists in the boardroom, who know that talking about these gains is going to counter their main argument with politicians: that their companies can't comply with proposed CO2 targets in time.