Michael Rowney & Renfrey Clarke
21 November 2008
Evidence is mounting of a coordinated global oil industry effort to seize upon the international economic crisis as an opportunity to rebel against ecological controls and bludgeon concessions out of governments.
The opening salvo was fired in late October by Chevron CEO Roy Krzywosinski, who told a major industry conference in Perth that he was so angry about the threat of carbon emissions regulations that his company might cut back its Australian operations.
A more important assault was announced on November 7, when BPs new CEO, Tony Hayward, announced that BP was shelving plans to develop clean energy technology in Britain and shifting investment to the United States.
Specifically, BP is terminating its wind power, and carbon capture and storage, schemes in Britain. A BP spokesman told the Times newspaper, Were off to the US because thats the best place to get a strong rate of return.
US President-elect Barak Obama has promised to spend $US150 billion over the next 10 years to initiate a major renewable energy industry in the US. The oil companies have taken an intense interest in this because, under US tax law, they can offset oil profits against investment in renewables.
Worldwide Fund for Nature spokesperson Keith Allott described BPs departure from Britain as deeply disappointing. It seems incompatible with the companys previous positioning of moving beyond petroleum, he said.
The attitude of the oil companies towards environmentalists was expressed succinctly by oil industry journal PetroleumNews.Net: Oil industry leaders have decided that low prices represent a perfect time to tackle the environmental lobby which has emerged in the western world as a major threat to future oil sector profits.
The oil industry has long been notorious for resisting environmental strictures on its operations. After the United Nations began addressing climate change issues in the late 1980s, the oil majors BP, Amoco, Shell, Exxon, Texaco and Chevron were among numerous energy and vehicle corporations to form the oddly named Global Climate Coalition (GCC).
The GCC was described by the Sourcewatch site as one of the most outspoken and confrontational industry groups in the US battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
No doubt sensing that these efforts would eventually discredit them with an increasingly climate-aware public, most of the oil corporations quit the GCC in the late 1990s. The organisation was finally disbanded in 2002.
But the worlds largest publicly listed oil company, Exxon-Mobil, continued to fund climate-change-denier think-tanks and publicity bodies. In May 2007, Greenpeace USA reported that in the previous year Exxon-Mobil had spent $2.1 million on 41 groups who are leading the climate skeptic industry.
For a time, BP followed a different strategy. After quitting the GCC in 1997, it rebranded itself as beyond petroleum, acquiring a renewable energy arm and a new exploding sunflower logo.
The lure of fossil-fuel profits, however, eventually led BP to cast off its green sheen. In December 2007 the firm entered a joint venture to extract bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands in northern Canada and refine it into vehicle fuels.
These processes are highly polluting. The British Independentreported last December 10 that producing a barrel of oil conventionally involves releasing about 29 kilograms of CO2. For one barrel of tar sands oil, the emissions can be as much as 125 kilograms.
In a more recent development, BP Solar announced on November 19 that it would close its photovoltaic cell and solar panel plant in Sydney, with the loss of some 200 jobs. The closure means Australias solar industry is now a research and supply sector rather than a contributor to manufacturing,Renewable Energy News reported.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
