Brazil bans oil giant Chevron from drilling after spill
Friday, 25 November 2011 00:00
Brasilia. - Brazil is temporarily banning the American company, Chevron, from drilling oil in its territory. The National Petroleum Agency (ANP) said it would suspend Chevron's activities in Brazil until it had established the cause of an oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.
Chevron has apologised for the leak, but has stressed it acted as rapidly and safely as possible to contain it.
The Brazilian government has fined Chevron US$28 million for the spill. Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said Chevron could face further fines if an investigation into the spill revealed more infractions.
ANP also rejected a Chevron request to drill a deeper well in the Frade field in order to reach sub-salt fields, which could hold reserves of more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil.
It said such drilling would "pose risks to the environment similar to those that occurred in the well where the spill occurred, but bigger and magnified by the greater depth". The head of Chevron's Brazil operation, George Buck, appeared before the lower house of the Brazilian parliament to apologise for the leak.
He said the company respected Brazil and the Brazilian people, its environment, laws and institutions.
"We are going to thoroughly investigate the accident and present the results to the Brazilian people . . . so that this does not happen again either here or in any other part of the world," Mr Buck said.
Brazilian authorities said the spill was now under control and the oil slick had been reduced to two square kilometres. ANP said the leak released between 200 and 330 barrels a day at the height of the spill.
The head of the ANP, Haroldo Lima, said the accident was "serious, but not major".
He said there was "no comparison" between this spill and last year's disaster at BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, where 11 people died and about 3 000 barrels a day were leaked.
In recent years Brazil has discovered billions of barrels of oil in deep water that could make it one of the world's top five producers. - bbc.co.uk
Labels: BRAZIL, CHEVRON, OIL
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WikiLeaks: BP had gas blowout in 2008
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES Dec 16 2010 06:22
Leaked US diplomatic cables reveal BP suffered a blowout on an Azerbaijan gas platform in September 2008 and was fortunate to evacuate workers safely after a blast that preceded the one that killed 11 workers in the Gulf of Mexico in April, the Guardian newspaper reported.
Other cables leaked by the web site WikiLeaks claim Azerbaijan's president accused BP of stealing oil from his country and using "mild blackmail" to secure rights to develop vast gas reserves in the Caspian Sea region.
Also, Chevron negotiated with Tehran about developing an Iraq-Iran cross-border oilfield despite US sanctions against Iran, according to the cables leaked to the Guardian.
The leaks came as the whistleblower site's jailed founder Julian Assange prepared for a challenge in the British high court to the decision to grant him bail. Swedish authorities, who want to question Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct, say he should remain in custody as he is a flight risk.
The Guardian said the latest leaks of US diplomatic cables showed striking resemblances between BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster and a little-reported gas leak in Azerbaijan experienced by the British firm 18 months beforehand.
The cables reveal, the Guardian said, that some of BP's partners in the gas field were upset the company was so secretive about the incident that it even allegedly withheld information from them. They also say that BP was lucky that it was able to evacuate its 212 workers safely after the incident, which resulted in two fields being shut and output being cut by at least 500 000 barrels a day with production disrupted for months.
The Guardian said one leaked embassy cable reports for the first time that BP suffered a blowout in September 2008, as it did in the Gulf with devastating consequences in April, as well as the gas leak that the firm acknowledged at the time.
"Due to the blowout of a gas-injection well there was 'a lot of mud' on the platform, which BP would analyse to help find the cause of the blowout and gas leak," the cable said, according to the Guardian.
'Bad cement job'
According to another cable in January 2009, BP thought that a "bad cement job" was to blame for the gas leak in Azerbaijan. More recently, BP's former chief executive Tony Hayward also partly blamed a "bad cement job" by contractor Halliburton for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Other leaked cables reveal President Ilham Aliyev accused BP of stealing billions of dollars of oil from Azerbaijan and using "mild blackmail" to secure the rights to develop vast gas reserves in the Caspian Sea region.
Aliyev said the oil firm tried to exploit his country's "temporary troubles" during a gas shortage in December 2006. In return for making more gas supplies available for domestic consumption that winter, BP wanted an extension of its lucrative profit-sharing contract with the government and the go-ahead to develop Caspian gas reserves, one cable from the US embassy in Baku says. Aliyev also threatened to make BP's alleged "cheating" public, the Guardian said the cables show.
The paper quoted the oil firm as saying in a statement that: "BP continues to have a successful and mutually beneficial partnership with the government of Azerbaijan."
There was no immediate response from BP officials in the United States to Reuters seeking comment.
According to other cables, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claimed that Chevron negotiated with Tehran about developing an Iraq-Iran cross-border oilfield in spite of tight US sanctions, according to the Guardian.
A Chevron spokesperson told Reuters the company had not done, and would not do, anything in violation of US law.
There was no immediate comment from the US government. - Reuters
Labels: BP, CHEVRON, CORRUPTION, WIKILEAKS
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Houston, TX - Antonia Juhasz, lead author and editor of The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report was forcibly dragged from Chevron's annual meeting yesterday as shareholders and their proxies chanted, "Chevron Lies, People Die." CEO John Watson abruptly ended the meeting. Juhasz was released from jail this afternoon at 1:15 pm CDT after being arrested in Chevron's annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning around 10:00 am CDT and kept overnight. She and other True Cost of Chevron Network members were there to share their stories of human rights and environmental abuses due to Chevron's operations.
The other four arrestees from the network, Juan Parras of Houston, TX; Reverend Ken Davis of Richmond, CA; and Mitch Anderson and Han Shan of San Francisco, CA, were released early this morning at 3:30 am CDT. They were arrested after being barred from the meeting.
"As a Houstonian, I am proud to be part of this global network. Chevron cannot silence the truth about its operations in Houston or anywhere else," stated Parras.
Labels: ANTONIA JUHASZ, CHEVRON, OIL, THE TYRANNY OF OIL
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