… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: BP

  • BP reports staggering profits

    Spread the love
    Image credit: Mike Mozart – Creative Commons

    Left Foot FORWARD: BP reports staggering profits as oil and gas prices surge

    Oil and gas giant BP has reported profits of £7.1bn between July an September 2022. The staggering bumper profits come as oil and gas prices remain high following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    BP’s profits, which are double that of the same period last year, have been slammed by environmental groups and the left, who have highlighted both the climate and cost of living crises – the latter being largely driven by energy prices. There have also been renewed calls for increasing the windfall tax on fossil fuel companies.

    …

    The reports of BP’s mega-profits come just days after Shell reported similar figures. Shell made £8.2bn between July and September 2022 and did not pay anything in the oil and gas windfall tax. That’s because of a loophole in the windfall tax which gives tax breaks to companies for investing in more fossil fuel extraction. BP has said it will pay $800m in windfall tax this year.

  • ‘Fantastic’: What Truss’s allies said about budget that crashed UK economy

    Spread the love

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/liz-truss-kwasi-kwarteng-mini-budget-think-tanks/

    [Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’] announcements were cheered on by a group of secretive think tanks closely connected to Liz Truss and her advisers. After years of lobbying, a Conservative government had finally adopted their proposals to scrap the top rate of income tax, remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shelve a planned rise in corporation tax, and pledge a fresh crackdown on unions.

    The Adam Smith Institute, where Truss’s political secretary Sophie Jarvis was head of government affairs, said the plans were “a welcome first step to getting the British economy back on track”.

    The mood was particularly buoyant at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose director general Mark Littlewood greeted the announcement by claiming: “This isn’t a trickle-down budget – it’s a boost-up budget.”

    …

    None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IEA has received donations from BP and ExxonMobil and, along with the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, the tobacco industry. The IEA and the Adam Smith Institute have also received millions of dollars from US funders of climate denial.

    …

  • COP26 News review day 8

    Spread the love

    Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disaster

    Barack Obama has called on world leaders to “step up and step up now” to avert climate breakdown, singling out China and Russia for being foremost among countries that are failing to cut planet-heating emissions quickly enough.

    Obama said that while progress has been made at the Glasgow climate talks, including significant pledges made by countries to reduce methane emissions and to end deforestation, “we are nowhere near where we need to be at” in cutting emissions and that “most nations have failed to be as ambitious as they need to be”.

    …

    HSBC led big banks’ charge against climate change action

    HSBC coordinated efforts to try and water down action on climate change in the banking sector by seeking to delay a key deadline and scrap mandatory science-based targets for a major net-zero alliance, the Bureau can reveal.

    …

    Revealed: 1,000 fossil fuel and big business reps at COP26

    Nearly 1,000 representatives from the fossil fuel industry, big business and nuclear power companies have registered to attend the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, according to an analysis by The Ferret.

    They include executives from Shell, BP, Equinor, Chevron, Total, Gazprom and other major oil and gas companies, as well as multinational corporations such as McDonald’s, Bayer, Walmart, HSBC, PepsiCo, Nestlé and Microsoft.

    There are also delegations from the coal industry, tobacco companies and pesticide manufacturers. Eleven people from two climate sceptic think-tanks have registered for the summit.

    …

    Wera Hobhouse MP: Tory fossil fuel funding is delaying an end date for fossil fuels

    ‘As long as we have a Government dominated by vested interests, the UK will make no progress on climate action.’

    Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson and MP for Bath.

    To reach net zero, we need an end date for the use of fossil fuels. Yet, the Government is taking us backwards on tackling climate change. Any wonder when they are bankrolled by fossil fuel interests and climate sceptics? As long as we have a Government dominated by vested interests, the UK will make no progress on climate action. 

    Earlier this week, an investigation revealed that the Conservative party and its MPs received £1.3m in gifts and donations from climate sceptics and fossil fuel interests since the election in 2019. 

    …

    How the UK Government is funnelling billions into fossil fuel projects abroad

    While spinning itself as a ‘leader’ in fighting climate change, the UK is funnelling billions into climate wrecking fossil fuel projects overseas

    …