Emergency services attending scenes after receiving multiple reports of an explosion, according to US media
A fire broke out at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery, California governor Gavin Newsom’s press office said, with a county official adding that the flames had been confined to one area.
The cause of the blaze was not clear, the Los Angeles Times reported, while CBS said firefighters were called to the refinery in Los Angeles county after reports of an explosion.
Continue reading...Insolvency Service says 125 roles to go at Lincolnshire plant, which went into administration in summer
Almost a third of workers at the Prax Lindsey oil refinery in north Lincolnshire, which collapsed into administration this summer, will lose their jobs at the end of October.
The Insolvency Service said the decision to make 125 roles redundant, with 255 people remaining at the site, “was not taken lightly” and follows a thorough review of “all aspects of the business, following its insolvency”.
Continue reading...US president claims Russia is in ‘big economic trouble’ as he calls for Nato countries to stop imports of Russian oil
Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.
The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.
Continue reading...Administrator was appointed after parent company State Oil was given new information about £783m loan
The Prax Lindsey oil refinery collapsed after “material irregularities” were discovered in a complex £783m loan facility that funded the wider group, it has emerged.
The refinery on the Humber estuary in northern England – one of just five left in the UK, – was suddenly plunged into administration in late June, prompting calls from furious government ministers for an investigation into Winston Soosaipillai, Prax Group’s oil tycoon owner.
Continue reading...Company to carry out more tests on its Santos basin find as it continues shift from renewables back to fossil fuels
BP has made its largest oil and gas discovery of the past 25 years off the coast of Brazil as it continues to shift its focus away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.
The Santos basin oil and gas discovery, which is located in deep waters, is the company’s 10th oil discovery of the year and could be its largest since its discovery at the Shah Deniz gasfield in Azerbaijan in 1999.
Continue reading...Statement to stock market follows media reports of early talks with BP to create a £200bn UK oil company
Shell has said it has “no intention” of making an offer for the rival fossil fuel company BP after speculation it had been planning a £60bn takeover, ruling out a formal approach for the next six months.
In an official statement to markets on Thursday, the company doubled down on the previous day’s denials that it was planning a bid, after media reports that it was in early talks with its competitor to create a £200bn UK oil supermajor.
Continue reading...Crude oil prices dropped by 7% on hopes that the conflict would not immediately disrupt region’s oil supplies
Oil prices dropped sharply after Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on a US airbase reduced concern that the country was poised to strain energy markets by closing off a vital trade route.
Crude oil prices sank by 7% on Monday, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures dropping to $68.51, as the Iranian action on the Al Udeid base in Qatar raised hopes that the conflict would not immediately disrupt oil supplies from the region.
Continue reading...Residents of Bille and Ogale in Niger delta are suing Shell and subsidiary, but company denies liability
Residents of two Nigerian communities who are taking legal action against Shell over oil pollution are set to take their cases to trial at the high court in 2027.
Members of the Bille and Ogale communities in the Niger delta, which have a combined population of about 50,000, are suing Shell and a Nigerian-based subsidiary of the company, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, which is now the Renaissance Africa Energy Company.
Continue reading...Body unveils plans to ban all gas imports from Russia by January 2028 – but faces backlash from Hungary, Slovakia and Austria
The European Commission has insisted there will be no return to Russian gas, as it published plans to phase out fossil fuel imports from its eastern neighbour by 2028.
The EU energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, said a proposed ban on Russian gas imports would remain, irrespective of whether there was peace in Ukraine.
Continue reading...With Nigel Farage targeting net zero, could government policy change to protect jobs, revenue and votes?
It was inevitable that Nigel Farage would take Reform UK’s campaign tour to Aberdeen. On a visit to the capital of the UK’s oil and gas industry on Monday he welcomed a defecting Aberdeen Conservative councillor, the 13th defection to his party’s ranks in Scotland to date.
Reform is hoping to make political hay from the discontent surrounding the government’s North Sea policies, the demise of the oil and gas basin and the vast workforce that depends on it. The populist party has vowed to reverse the government’s ban on fresh North Sea oil and gas drilling as a “day one” priority if elected to power in 2029.
Continue reading...The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power
• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futures
Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.
Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.
Continue reading...Clean energy investors likely to pull back from US, but other countries may seize opportunity to speed transition
Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.
In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.
Continue reading...Many of the people displaced by Eacop project were inadequately rehoused or compensated, report says
People displaced from their homes alongside the site of an oil pipeline under construction in Uganda have complained of being inadequately rehoused or compensated.
When completed, the East African crude oil pipeline (Eacop) will transport oil from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oilfields in western Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania.
Continue reading...The US president is making energy deals with Japan and Ukraine, and in Africa has even touted resurrecting coal
Donald Trump’s repeated mantra of “drill, baby, drill” demands that more oil and gas be extracted in the United States, but the president has set his sights on an even broader goal: keeping the world hooked on planet-heating fossil fuels for as long as possible.
In deals being formulated with countries such as Japan and Ukraine, Trump is using US leverage in tariffs and military aid to bolster the flow of oil and gas around the world. In Africa, his administration has even touted the resurrection of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, to bring energy to the continent.
Continue reading...Chris Wright signals abandonment of Biden’s ‘irrational, quasi-religious’ climate policies at industry conference
The world needs more planet-heating fossil fuel, not less, Donald Trump’s newly appointed energy secretary, Chris Wright, told oil and gas bigwigs on Monday.
“We are unabashedly pursuing a policy of more American energy production and infrastructure, not less,” he said in the opening plenary talk of CERAWeek, a swanky annual conference in Houston, Texas, led by the financial firm S&P Global.
Continue reading...King Okpabi, ruler of Ogale, says Shell has caused chronic pollution, while oil firm argues it is not responsible
His Royal Highness King Godwin Bebe Okpabi has carried bottles of water drawn from the wells of his homeland in the Niger delta to the high court in London.
It stinks. “This is the water that Shell has left for my people,” said the ruler of the Ogale community in Ogoniland, Nigeria. “This is poison, and they are spending millions of dollars to pay the best lawyers in the world so that they will not clean my land.”
Continue reading...Firm will be selective about investing in low-carbon options, slashing more than $5bn from previous green plan
BP is almost doubling its target for oil and gas production by the end of the decade and slashing its spending on low-carbon energy as part of a fundamental reset of the troubled company away from previous green goals.
The FTSE 100 fossil fuel company has promised shareholders it will increase its planned oil and gas production by 2030 to the equivalent of about 2.4m barrels a day – almost twice the figure in its net zero plan set out five years ago.
Continue reading...Greenpeace protest draws attention to worsening typhoons and demands accountability from major polluters
For two days and two nights, Ronalyn Carbonel and her four children clung to the roof of their home as a huge storm raged around them. With the wind battering her village of Rizal, about 10 miles east of Manila in the Philippines, and water swirling through the rooms below them, they had no choice but to wait, hoping that someone would come to rescue them and hundreds of their neighbours.
“We did not have shelter, we did not have food … we just had to wait for the government for two days,” Carbonel said. “It is not easy, no electricity, no light, we just wait for the sun to rise. The children were scared, we had never experienced anything like this.”
Continue reading...Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil
The vast majority of governments are likely to miss a looming deadline to file vital plans that will determine whether or not the world has a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.
Despite the urgency of the crisis, the UN is relatively relaxed at the prospect of the missed date. Officials are urging countries instead to take time to work harder on their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions and divest from fossil fuels.
Continue reading...Tariffs on imports mean higher costs for finishing fuels, much of which is likely to be passed on to consumers
US consumers will see higher prices at the gas pump from Donald Trump’s decision on Saturday to apply tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil, according to analysts and fuel traders.
The likely hike in fuel prices reflects the double-edged nature of Trump’s trade protections, which are designed to bolster domestic business and pressure US neighbors to curb illegal immigration and drug smuggling, but which will also run counter to his promises to tackle inflation.
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