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British Petroleum news

Information on the actions of and actions against BP oil and gas company.

Trump weakens environmental legislation following BP lobbying

An investigation by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s independent journalism team, reveals how BP successfully lobbied the Trump administration to weaken environmental laws – making it potentially harder to block major new oil and gas projects on climate change grounds.

The oil giant, together with the American Petroleum Institute (API), lobbied the White House to reform the 50 year old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) so that the climate impacts of major fossil fuel projects largely fall outside its scope.

Projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the auctioning of hundreds of thousands of acres of oil and gas leases in Wyoming have been delayed by federal judges on the grounds that their climate impacts have not been adequately assessed under NEPA. Projects like these may now find it easier to move forward.

Mel Evans, senior oil campaigner for Greenpeace UK, commented: “The oil industry insists it has a right to dictate how the world fights the climate emergency, and how quickly change happens. But this shows that for all their lip service to the energy transition, BP and the rest of the sector are focusing their efforts on blocking real action to cut emissions and stabilise our climate.”

Pressure mounts on the British Museum to sever its BP ties

The director of the ‘Queens of Syria’ play, a film of which is currently being exhibited in the British Museum as part of the ‘Troy exhibition’, and a Syrian refugee who performed in it, have written an open letter to the British Museum.

The letter called on the museum to sever its ties with oil giant BP. In it they wrote:

“BP has directly profited from the widespread destruction and displacement of people, like the thirteen women who formed the cast for our play, and yet you have reached the conclusion that its logo should brand an exhibition highlighting exactly the issues BP contributes to causing…

“You place artists such as ourselves in an impossible position, where we must decide whether it is worse to try and remove our work from the exhibition - taking away the chance that this show can shine a light on the harsh realities that our team are living under - or to allow our work to help art wash the impacts and crimes of BP, a multinational oil and gas company that has wreaked havoc on this planet and its people.”

image: bp or not bp blog troy exhibition london museum

This letter adds to mounting pressure on the British Museum to follow in the footsteps of the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Galleries Scotland, who recently announced they would end their partnerships with BP.

Furthermore, in November, activists from ‘BP or not BP’ transformed themselves into Troy-inspired ‘living statues’ and covered themselves in oil to blockade the VIP launch of the ‘Troy’ exhibition.

This forced organisers of the event to relocate the exhibition.

The activists invented a god, Petroleus (pictured here), who wore an oil slick for a robe.

For more information about the campaign to end fossil fuel sponsorship of culture see the Culture Unstained website.

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