Posts Tagged ‘ConocoPhillips’

By Jeremy Hodges, Lauren Leatherby and Kartikay Mehrotra
May 24, 2018

In the global fight against climate change, one tool is proving increasingly popular: litigation. From California to the Philippines, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing the biggest polluters and national governments over the effects of climate change at a break-neck pace. “The courts are our last, best hope at this moment of irreversible harm to our planet and life on it,” said Julia Olson, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, a legal challenge center in the U.S. that is involved in climate change litigation across 13 countries, including the U.S., Pakistan and Uganda. Cases by San Francisco and Oakland face a motion to dismiss the lawsuit today in a California federal court, where Chevron Corp., BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhilips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc will argue that remedies and penalties for climate change are a matter for lawmakers, not a single judge. read more

By Bob Van Voris: 4 May 2018, 23:09 BST Updated on 5 May 2018, 02:09 BST

♦Case affects global economy, national security, companies say

♦New York argues oil companies denied climate change science

This lawsuit is based upon the fundamental principle that a corporation that makes a product causing severe harm when used exactly as intended should shoulder the costs of abating that harm. Defendants here produced, marketed, and sold massive quantities of fossil fuels—primarily oil and natural gas—despite knowing that the combustion and use of fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases (“GHG pollution” or “GHGs”), primarily carbon dioxide (“CO2”). Defendants have also known for decades that GHG pollution accumulates and remains in the atmosphere for up to hundreds of years, where it traps heat, a process commonly referred to as “climate change” or “global warming,” and that this process would cause grave harm.

Five of the world’s biggest oil companies asked a judge to throw out New York City’s lawsuit seeking to hold them responsible for costs related to the environmental changes caused by their products. BP Plc, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Royal Dutch Shell Plc argued that the court lacks the authority to resolve broad policy questions with “profound implications for the global economy, international relations and America’s national security.” FULL ARTICLE read more

Dana Nuccitelli: Fri 23 Mar 2018 10.00 GMT

In a California court case this week, Judge William Alsup asked the two sides to provide him a climate science tutorial. The plaintiffs are the coastal cities of San Francisco and Oakland. They’re suing five major oil companies (Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillipsand BP) to pay for the cities’ costs to cope with the sea level rise caused by global warming. FULL ARTICLE

David Levine: 21 MARCH 2018

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Five of the world’s biggest energy producers will be questioned by a federal judge on Wednesday about climate change science, part of a lawsuit that accuses the companies of misleading the public for years about their role in global warming. The cities of San Francisco and Oakland, California sued Chevron Corp (CVX.N), Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), ConocoPhillips (COP.N), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSa.L), and BP PLC (BP.L) last year, seeking an abatement fund to help the cities address flooding they say is a result of climate change. FULL ARTICLE read more

Daniel Fisher: Writer and communications consultant and former senior editor with Forbes magazine; 21 March 2018

Five of the world’s largest oil and gas producers have filed a motion to dismiss a climate change lawsuit against them by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco even as they prepare to deliver an unusual “tutorial” on climate science to the federal judge overseeing the case. In a 45-page filing on Tuesday, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell urged U.S. District Judge William Alsup to dismiss the lawsuit seeking billions of dollars to pay for costs associated with global warming. The oil companies argue the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have repeatedly rejected similar lawsuits against oil companies, the auto industry and electric utilities because Congress has given authority to regulate CO2 emissions exclusively to the Environmental Protection Agency. FULL ARTICLE read more

Borrowing from the playbook that won multibillion-dollar awards against Big Tobacco, five California cities and counties sued the oil giants last year, claiming they deceived the public for decades about the dangers of fossil fuel production.

NICHOLAS IOVINO: February 16, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The fate of five lawsuits seeking to hold the world’s biggest oil companies liable for global climate change hinges on a murky jurisdictional question that could get some cases booted out of federal court.

For the past eight days, attorneys for more than a dozen oil companies urged two federal judges not to send lawsuits against them back to state court, where five California cities and counties sued Big Oil last year.

“The extraordinary nature of these claims encompasses conduct across the globe,” the oil companies’ attorney Theodore Boutrous said in court Thursday. “We think the federal courts need to hear this, because it’s uniquely federal.” read more

Istvan Kapitany, head of Shell’s global retail business

By Kevin Orland: 9 February 2018

(Bloomberg) — While many oil producers are stepping back from their retail operations, Royal Dutch Shell Plc is doubling down.

Shell, which has about 44,000 filling stations around the world, opened its first one in Mexico last year, the start of $1 billion in investments over the next decade. Shell also is ramping up spending in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, Istvan Kapitany, head of Shell’s global retail business, said in an interview in Calgary. read more

BY RICHARD A. EPSTEIN ON 1/17/18 AT 9:30 AM

New York City and a number of California municipalities, including San Francisco and Oakland, have filed lawsuits against five major oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—for contributing to the increased risk of global warming.

These complaints cite recent scientific reports that project that sea levels will rise from 0.2 meters to 2.0 meters (or 0.66 to 6.6 feet) by 2100, with a major loss of land surface area and serious climate disruptions. read more

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally. Credit: NASA/GISS

By Chris Mooney and Dino Grandoni January 10 2018

The New York City government is suing the world’s five largest publicly traded oil companies, seeking to hold them responsible for present and future damages to the city from climate change. The suit, filed Tuesday against BP, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, claims the companies together produced 11 percent of all of global warming gases through the oil and gas products they have sold over the years. It also charges that the companies and the industry of which they are part have known for some time about the consequences but sought to obscure them. FULL ARTICLE read more

Ernest Sheyder and Valerie Volcovici

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed opening up nearly all of America’s offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, but the industry says it is mainly interested in one part of it, now cordoned off by the Pentagon: the eastern Gulf of Mexico. “The eastern Gulf of Mexico could be very attractive to industry because of the proximity to existing infrastructure in the central and western Gulf of Mexico,” the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents the offshore oil and gas industry, said in a statement. FULL ARTICLE read more

Shell, in an initiative called “iShale,” has marshaled technology from a dozen oilfield suppliers, including devices from subsea specialist TechnipFMC Plc that separate fracking sand from oil and well-control software from Emerson Electric Co, to bring more automation and data analysis to shale operations.

Ernest Scheyder: NOVEMBER 28, 2017

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Shale oil engineer Oscar Portillo spends his days drilling as many as five wells at once – without ever setting foot on a rig. Part of a team working to cut the cost of drilling a new shale well by a third, Portillo works from a Royal Dutch Shell Plc office in suburban Houston, his eyes darting among 13 monitors flashing data on speed, temperature and other metrics as he helps control rigs more than 500 miles (805 km) away in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oilfield. FULL ARTICLE read more

Norway’s proposal to sell off $35 billion in oil and natural gas stocks brings sudden and unparalleled heft to a once-grassroots movement to enlist investors in the fight against climate change. read more

The $1 trillion fund that Norway has amassed pumping oil and gas over the past two decades wants out of petroleum stocks.  

Norway, which relies on oil and gas for about a fifth of economic output, would be less vulnerable to declining crude prices without its fund investing in the industry, the central bank said Thursday. The divestment would mark the second major step in scrubbing the world’s biggest wealth fund of climate risk, after it sold most of its coal stocks. The plan would entail the fund, which controls about 1.5 percent of global stocks, dumping as much as $40 billion of shares in international giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The Finance Ministry said it will study the proposal and decide what to do in “fall of 2018” at the earliest. FULL ARTICLE read more

Norway is western Europe’s biggest oil producer and its giant sovereign wealth fund wants to reduce its exposure to oil which hit shares in BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Oil platforms in the Cromarty Firth, ScotlandANDREW MILLIGAN/PA

Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund has unveiled plans to dump its entire holding in oil and gas companies in a $37 billion sell-off that was welcomed by campaign groups but put downward pressure on share prices. The $1 trillion fund, which manages the assets of the oil-rich nation, signalled its intent to prune its exposure to companies including BP and Royal Dutch Shell in a move aimed at making it less vulnerable to a permanent drop in the price of crude. SOURCE read more

The companies have been accused of causing an adverse impact on the climate, resulting in global warming. The plaintiffs hold these fossil fuel companies accountable for rising sea levels, changing landscapes, higher global temperatures and increased risk of storms and droughts. The cities are located on the opposite sides of San Francisco Bay, and the lawsuit claims that the region’s water level is already on the rise. If the companies lose the case, they will be liable to pay billions of dollars in fines. Though the lawsuits do not specify the compensation amount, updating San Francisco’s seawall alone could cost up to $5 billion. FULL ARTICLE read more

Gary McWilliams: SEPTEMBER 21, 2017 / 2:34 AM

(Reuters) – California cities San Francisco and Oakland filed separate lawsuits against five oil companies on Wednesday seeking billions of dollars to protect against rising sea levels they blamed on climate change, according to public documents. The lawsuits, filed in state courts in San Francisco and Alameda Counties, alleged Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp, BP Plc, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, created a public nuisance and asked for funds to finance infrastructure to deal with rising sea levels. According to a news release from San Francisco city officials, the lawsuits mirror 1980s-era lawsuits against tobacco companies. They allege the oil giants “knowingly and recklessly created an ongoing public nuisance that is causing harm now and in the future risks catastrophic harm to human life and property.” FULL ARTICLE read more