‘CEO elect’ Bob Dudley
under immediate pressure to take company
in new direction On this page Press release
- July 27, 2010
LONDON, As BP announces its second quarter
loses and a new boss, Greenpeace activists
have shut down every BP petrol station in
central London,
putting up signs saying: ‘Closed. Moving
beyond petroleum’.
BP is expected to announce the appointment
of Bob Dudley as the company’s new CEO,
formerly the group vice-president for alternative
and renewable energy. The BP board is also
expected to announce record losses after
setting aside around US$25-$30 billion to
pay for the massive clean-up operation and
legal fees resulting from the huge oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico. (1)
“BP’s new boss, Bob
Dudley, should overturn current plans to
extract oil from risky deepwater wells off
Libya and in the Arctic, where a spill could
have consequences even more devastating
than in the Gulf, as well as from the ‘tar
sands’ of Canada,” warned Kumi Naidoo, Executive
Director Greenpeace International. (2)
“A change in leadership
is a key opportunity for BP to cut its loses
in more ways than one, by turning away from
high-cost and environmentally reckless sources
of oil, like deepwater drilling and Canadian
tar sands, towards an energy revolution
based on clean energy sources,” said Naidoo.
Fifty BP petrol stations
were shut down by small teams, which used
a shut off switch to stop the flow of fuel
at each location. The switches are being
safely removed to prevent the stations from
re-opening.
At one station (3),
Greenpeace climbers replaced BP’s now infamous
green logo with one better reflecting what
the company’s brand currently stands for
in the public mind – a logo the BP ‘sunflower’
disappearing into a sea of oil.
“The time has come for
BP to move beyond oil. Under Tony Hayward
the company went backwards, squeezing the
last drops of oil from places like the Gulf
of Mexico, tar sands of Canada and even
the fragile Arctic wilderness.
“We’ve shut down all
of BP’s stations in London to give the new
boss a chance to come up with a better plan.
They’re desperate for us to believe they’re
going ‘beyond petroleum’. Well, now’s the
time to prove it,” said John Sauven, Executive
Director Greenpeace UK.
Industry analysts agree
that Bob Dudley will come under intense
pressure to outline a new strategy to revive
the company’s fortunes as its share price
is currently 40% lower than before the disaster.
The deepwater disaster
is a global wake up call and Greenpeace
is calling for:
1.An immediate ban on
new offshore drilling and exploration of
all high-risk unconventional oil sources
(including in the Arctic and the Canadian
tar sands)
2.An end to fossil fuel subsidies and an
increase in support for clean energy
3.Strong laws and policies that limit climate
change and stimulate a clean energy revolution.
Notes to editors:
(1) A company presentation
by Tony Hayward in March shows that over
the course of 2010, BP planned to invest
US$19 billion in its oil and gas business
compared with less than US$1 billion on
all alternative technologies combined. (p.
67).
(2) Extracting oil from
tar sands is around three times as damaging
to the climate than drilling for regular
crude. Alex D. Charpentier, Joule A. Bergerson
and Heather L.MacLean. Understanding the
Canadian oil sands industry’s greenhouse
gas emissions, Environmental Research Letters
1 (2009)
(3) The station is located
in Camden, north London. The replacement
logo was designed as part of a Greenpeace
competition, which attracted over 2,500
entries over six weeks. See www.greenpeace.org.uk/bp
for more information.
+ More
Under fire forest destroyer
caught breaking promises
New investigation shows
Indonesia’s largest palm and pulp group
still destroying critical habitats
On this page Press release - July 29, 2010
A new Greenpeace investigation into the
operations of Sinar Mas group, one the most
notorious destroyers of Indonesia’s rainforests,
reveals how it is continuing to break its
own environmental commitments on protecting
forests and peatland.
Publishing new photographic evidence, aerial
monitoring and field analysis [1], Greenpeace
International today details how the Sinar
Mas group continues to clear rainforest
containing priceless biodiversity – such
as orang-utan habitat - and carbon-rich
peatlands, despite public promises it has
made to clean up its act.
The revelations also
highlight Sinar Mas’ ambitions to expand
its pulp and palm oil empire into millions
more hectares across Indonesia, including
large tracts of rainforest and peatland
in the province of Papua. These ambitions
are outlined in confidential Sinar Mas documents
obtained by Greenpeace. Last week, the head
of Sinar Mas’ palm oil division confirmed
the company’s intentions to expand its empire
by an additional 1 million hectares. [2]
Sinar Mas claims not
to develop on peatland and to protect forests
of ‘high conservation value’. Earlier Greenpeace
investigations repeatedly documented cases
where Sinar Mas operations actively cleared
rainforest and peatland areas, including
tiger and orang-utan habitats. Now today’s
report exposes current rainforest destruction
by Sinar Mas in two of its concessions on
the island of Borneo.
In the first case, a
confidential Sinar Mas document shows that
nearly one-third of the concession area
is peatland, almost all of which is deep
peat that would be illegal to develop under
Indonesian law. Greenpeace photographs show
plant operators engaged in active rainforest
clearance in the peatland area. In the second
case, Greenpeace photographs document recent
clearance of rainforest areas of orang-utan
habitat, identified by a United Nations
Environment Programme study. [3]
In both cases the photographs
were taken by a Greenpeace photographer
accompanied by journalists from respected
news operations Reuters, AFP and Kompas.
Following the latest
revelations Greenpeace is calling on Sinar
Mas to come clean and make public its maps
detailing all its landholdings, to enable
analysis of which areas are critically important
for biodiversity and climate protection,
and what it is doing in those areas.
"We’ve caught Sinar
Mas red-handed destroying valuable rainforests,
and breaching the limited promises it has
made to clean up its act. This is typical
of a group that has an appalling record
of environmental destruction. Sinar Mas
has to be reigned in if there is to be a
future for what’s left of Indonesia’s rainforests.
Until this group changes course, other businesses
should have nothing to do with Sinar Mas,”
said Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace forest campaigner.
The disclosures come
on the day Sinar Mas had planned to publish
an audit it commissioned into its own activities
in a small number of its palm oil operations,
in response to revelations made in earlier
Greenpeace reports. The company’s audit
was not designed to assess its practices
across all of its operations, but instead
to examine allegations made by Greenpeace
in recent years. The evidence released by
Greenpeace today includes photographs of
peat and forest clearance in a concession
due to feature in the Sinar Mas audit. PR
company Bell Pottinger (which Sinar Mas
has hired to run the around the audit) was
this week forced to announce it was postponing
its publication.
Bell Pottinger also
represents disgraced oil trading company
Trafigura, which was convicted last week
of illegally exporting toxic waste to Africa.
[4]
In recent months several
leading multinationals – including Unilever,
Kraft and Nestle - have responded to Greenpeace’s
evidence by ending their contracts with
Sinar Mas. However, Greenpeace is calling
on others, including trading giant Cargill,
to take immediate action to remove rainforest
destruction from their supply chain.
Notes:
[1] Ref: London Sunday
Times, 25th July 2010
[2] The Sinar Mas concessions where this
year Greenpeace found the company breaking
its commitments are:
•The PT Agro Lestari
Mandiri concession in Ketapang district,
West Kalimantan
•The PT Bangun Nusa Mandiri concession in
Ketapang district, West Kalimantan
Earlier Greenpeace reports
detailing Sinar Mas practices can be found
here:
•Cooking the Climate
- this was our first look at the issue in
2007: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/cooking-the-climate
•Burning up Borneo - This is the report
that Unilever have already had audited (see
below for that): http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/burning-up-borneo
•Illegal deforestation and RSPO greenwash:
Case studies of Sinar Mas: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/illegal-forest-clearance-and-rspo-greenwash-case-studies-sinar-mas
•Nestle and Sinar Mas: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/caught-red-handed-how-nestle/
[4] The Guardian, “How UK oil company Trafigura
tried to cover up African pollution disaster”,
16 September 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/trafigura-african-pollution-disaster
The Guardian, “Trafigura
fined €1m for exporting toxic waste to Africa”,
23 July 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/23/trafigura-dutch-fine-waste-export
+ More
Greenpeace activists
quarantine illegal GE crops in Italy
On this page Press release
- July 30, 2010
Pordenone, Italy - Greenpeace activists
from Italy, Austria, Germany and Hungary
are quarantining illegal Genetically Engineered
(GE) crops being grown in Italy. Wearing
safety equipment to protect against contamination,
the activists are isolating, cutting and
securing the top of the GE maize plants,
the part that contains the pollen.
Last week, Greenpeace
took samples from the field in Friuli, northern
Italy to a certified laboratory for analysis.
The results confirm without doubt that the
maize being grown in these fields is a patented
Mosanto GE maize type, MON810. GE crop cultivation
without a permit is illegal in Italy (1).
There is considerable documentation highlighting
the threats posed by MON810 to biodiversity,
including the accumulation of toxins in
soil, and negative impacts on species such
as butterflies and moths (2).
“Greenpeace has taken
action today to prevent any further contamination
from these hazardous and illegal GE crops,”
said Federica Ferrario, Greenpeace Italy
Agriculture campaigner. “For days these
crops will have been contaminating not only
neighbouring fields, but countryside further
away as well, as insects and winds disseminate
their pollen.”
Greenpeace and the Italian
Task Force for a GE-Free Italy, (3) which
is also demonstrating today, urge the Italian
authorities to take stronger action against
these and any illegal GE crops.
“The authorities must
take immediate action, particularly given
that it is likely there are other fields
of GE maize being illegally cultivated in
Friuli” continued Ferrario. “Greenpeace
has started the job today, but now the authorities
must take over and act to isolate and destroy
these GE fields, as well as begin wide scale
sampling and analysis.”
With GE contamination
scandals growing all the time (4), Greenpeace
calls on the Italian government to take
a lead in rejecting an attempt by the European
Commission to fast track the authorisation
of GE crops. The Commission, whose authorisation
processes for GE crops are already woefully
inadequate and often contravene European
law, is proposing that in exchange for an
uncertain right (meaning it can be challenged
by biotech companies) to ban GE crops at
national level, EU member states allow the
Commission to promote faster authorisation
approvals at an EU level (5). ENDS
Notes 1. Italian Decree
n.212, 24 April 2001, requires that “the
planting of genetically modified plants
is subjected to specific authorization:
the cultivation, in the absence of the required
permit, shall be punished with the arrest
from six months to three years or fine up
to € 51,700. In addition, a decree signed
last April by the ministers of agriculture,
health and environment, expressly prohibits
cultivation of GE maize in Friuli Region.
2. http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/eu-unit/press-centre/reports/review-EFSA-MON810-opinion-29-07-09.pdf
3. Today, outside the
prefecture building of the city of Pordenone,
the Italian “Task Force for a GE-Free Italy”
(Acli, Adoc Adusbef, Aiab, Amab, Campagna
Amica, Cia, Città del Vino, Cna Alimentare,
Codacons, Coldiretti, Crocevia, Fai, Federconsumatori,
Ferderparchi, Focsiv, Fondazione Univerde,
Greenaccord, Greenpeace, Lega Pesca, Legacoop
Agroalimentare, Legambiente, Movimento difesa
del cittadino, Slow Food, Unci, Vas, WWF)
is demonstrating and asking the authorities
to destry the GE fields.
4. http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/
5. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/beware-the-eu-commission-bearing-gifts/blog/12858
