BG Group has reported a near 40 per cent fall North Sea production amid disruptions caused by repairs and maintenance work.
The oil and gas firm, which has recommended a £47bn bid from Shell, produced 77,000 barrels oil equivalent per day in the UK in the first quarter. This was down 38 per cent on the 125,000 boed produced in the same period last year.
The big fall in output came after four fields were shut down temporarily to allow work to be done on the CATS gas pipeline and the Lomond production platform.
Shell wins injunction keeping Greenpeace away from Arctic drilling fleet
Greenpeace protesters must stay away from Royal Dutch Shell’s drill ships and support vessels, the anchor lines and buoys attached to them and the Barrow airport hangar and terminal that Shell is seeking to use to support its planned oil-exploration operations in the Chukchi Sea, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Greenpeace activists are even prohibited from flying drones this summer and fall over the offshore Arctic area where Shell plans to drill, according to the injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason.
Royal Dutch Shell says first oil production from its 80,000-barrel-per-day Carmon Creek thermal oilsands project northeast of Peace River in northern Alberta will be delayed for two years until 2019.
The project was sanctioned by the company in October 2013 and estimated by analysts at the time to cost about $3 billion to build. Its delay was confirmed in a first-quarter update by chief financial officer Simon Henry on April 30, as he described how Shell would reduce capital spending by $2 billion in 2015 to $33 billion US or less.
Not many things live to be 100 years old. So when they do, we celebrate! Ninety-nine years ago, on May 9, 1916, the American Federation of Teachers was founded in Chicago, when eight local unions formed the AFT and were granted a charter signed by American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers. Leading up to the AFT national convention in 2016, we will spend the next year looking back on our rich history—our struggles, our accomplishments, our proudest moments—and celebrating how far we have come and what lies ahead.
- See more at: http://www.aft.org/100-years#sthash.kIR5MKpw.dpuf
Since that day in 1916, our strength has come from the diversity of our members—who now number 1.6 million—in all constituencies and from the proud history of our local and state affiliates. The next year will be about honoring our past and inspiring our future. We will showcase major events in AFT history, and the role that AFT members and affiliates have played in major milestones like the civil rights movement, women’s rights and the evolution of the middle class, to name just a few. We even applied for a commemorative stamp! And we cannot do this without your input.
Make sure your history and the amazing work your AFT affiliate has been doing over the past 100 years is represented in our story.
- See more at: http://www.aft.org/100-years#sthash.kIR5MKpw.dpuf
I am so proud of the work we have done in these last 100 years and look forward to what is to come!
In unity,
Randi Weingarten AFT President
Lorretta Johnson AFT Secretary-Treasurer
Mary Cathryn Ricker AFT Executive Vice President
P.S. Use the hashtag #AFT100 to tweet your memories, TBTs and celebrations all year!
We all remember the infamous quote from Mitt Romney in the 2012 Election:
And while sensible people think that's a ridiculous idea...
"Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."
~Supreme Court Justice Stevens, January 2010 (Citizens United Dissent)
...conservative Justices on the Supreme Court have codified it into our laws. According to the conservative majority on the Court, corporations are in fact people with Constitutional rights.
The results have been utterly disastrous. Citizens United v. F.E.C. --SpeechNow.org v. F.E.C. -- McCutcheon v. F.E.C. These cases have opened the floodgates for corporate money in our elections.
Lauren Steiner: The woman who is trying to position herself as a supporter of the middle class, spent the entire day behind closed doors raising a number of $2700 donations from the 1% and conducting meetings with people who would be prepared to give and bundle donations ten times that amount to her Super Pac.
Lauren Steiner: The woman who is trying to position herself as a supporter of the middle class, spent the entire day behind closed doors raising a number of $2700 donations from the 1% and conducting meetings with people who would be prepared to give and bundle donations ten times that amount to her Super Pac.
Mark Naison: Asking young people to go through entire days sitting in their chairs, devoid of any regular physical outlet, is to ask them to do something entirely unnatural for any human being, much less a child.
Without Hope, Inner-City Residents Will Take to the Streets
Alvaro Huerta: While I became accustomed to being pulled over, frisked and questioned by the police in the projects, I never expected this harassment to follow me to UCLA.
America’s Enduring Challenge and What We Need to Do about It
Frank Fear: Jobs are the centerpiece, especially jobs associated with making and doing things. Enhancing access to technical, skill-based education is important.
Democrats just introduced a bill to force SuperPACs to disclose their major donors at the end of TV ads: 5O,OOO Signatures Needed → Sign your name to support the K.O.C.H. Act:
Here are the names of some real groups that attacked President Obama in 2012:
They sound innocent enough.
But they’re actually right-wing front-groups for the likes of Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers.
Voters deserve to know who’s behind the deceptive ads flooding our airwaves.
The Keeping Our Campaigns Honest Act (K.O.C.H. Act) would do just that -- forcing SuperPACs and dark money groups to disclose major donors at the end of their ads.
But if Democrats are going to get this bill through Congress, it’ll take a tremendous grassroots effort.
5O,OOO Signatures Needed → Sign your name to support the K.O.C.H. Act:
Recently, I was on Democracy Now!, an hourly news report that runs on over 1250 TV and radio stations worldwide each day. The subject was trade:
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the pending vote in Congress on the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade deal currently being negotiated between the United States and 11 Latin American and Asian countries. Senate Finance Committee leaders Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ron Wyden are expected to introduce a "fast-track" trade promotion authority bill as early as this week that would give the president authority to negotiate the TPP trade deal and then present it to Congress for a yes-or-no vote, with no amendments allowed. . . . Congressman Alan Grayson, could you explain your opposition to fast-track authority, and what you're calling on your colleagues in Congress to do?
What's happening is not that we're buying goods and services from foreigners and they're buying an equal amount of goods and services from us-that's the way free trade is supposed to work. What's actually happening is that we're buying our goods and services from foreigners, and they are taking the money that we give to them for that, and buying our assets.
That has all sorts of consequences for our economy. First we lose those jobs. Secondly, it makes American income and wealth more and more unequal. The reason why we have the fourth most unequal distribution of wealth in the world is because of fake trade. The reason why we have a bizarre, and at this point unprecedented, "quantitative easing" [monetary] policy, where the government uses the cash in our pockets to buy up assets and drive those asset prices up further and further, is because of fake trade. The reason why we have a federal deficit is because we have a trade deficit. The TPP, "fast-track," the Transatlantic version of TPP, these dramatically increase the amount of countries with whom we have this relationship-they quadruple them-and they put us on a fast track to Hell, where America is nothing but cheap labor and debt slavery. . . .
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to President Obama speaking in February after he began the major push for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is bipartisan legislation that would protect American workers and promote American businesses, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren't just free, but are fair. It would level the playing field for American workers. It would hold all countries to the same high labor and environmental standards to which we hold ourselves. Now, I'm the first to admit that past trade deals haven't always lived up to the hype. And that's why we've successfully gone after countries that break the rules at our workers' expense. But that doesn't mean we should close ourselves off from new opportunities and sit on the sidelines while other countries write our future for us.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's President Obama speaking in February. President Obama is, obviously, President of the United States, [the] leading Democrat. Congressman Grayson, he represents your party, as well. Why the difference? Who are the blocs now that are united? We're not just talking [that] it's Democrats here and Republicans here. What set of Republicans and Democrats agree on this?
REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Well, it's a mystery to me. You know, I was in the room when the President gave that statement, made that speech. He gave a 45-minute speech. On those three sentences, that was the only time during that entire speech when the Republicans rose up and applauded him, and the Democrats did not. I think that's very revealing. There are very, very few Democratic votes [for Fast-Track] in the House of Representatives, because we represent ordinary working people. The groups that are lobbying the hardest for this are the multinational corporations, and their K Street lobbyists. They're the ones who desperately want to see this passed. . . . Ordinary Democrats represent constituencies who have been hurt hard, really hurt very hard, by the loss of those five million manufacturing jobs and 15 million other jobs. Go to any Democratic district in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. And the fact is that there is very little support, if any significant support, within the Democratic House Caucus for Fast-Track or for the TPP. We do have a few corporate Democrats. Frankly, we do have a couple of sell-out Democrats, who have sold out to the corporate lobbyists. But the bulk of the Democratic Party well understands, along with the labor movement and ordinary people, that these policies have been disastrous for us. And it is a lie to say that they will improve the economy. In fact, they will continue the downward trend of the economy, until foreigners own everything. . . .
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Grayson, do you have to rely on WikiLeaks to get information about what's actually in the TPP agreement?
REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Well, one of the sad and disturbing elements of this whole process has been the artificial secrecy that's been imposed by the Administration and by the Trade Representative on these dealings. I can't think of any other occasion, when I've served in Congress, when I've seen the element of deception loom so large here. The public is better informed of Iraqi attacks on ISIS, which you'd think would be classified, than it is informed on a trade deal that's going to determine our economic future for the next 20 years. What's happened is that, right at the beginning, the Trade Representative took the absurd position that everything that was being negotiated was classified, even though it was directly in the hands of the foreign governments with whom he was negotiating. Remember, normally, we have a classified system to keep information away from our enemies, or at least other governments. In this case, it was the other governments that had the information, and it was Congress and the American people who were being denied the information. And they took that position for five years, even though 100 members of Congress wrote a letter to the trade representative saying, "Cut this out."
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being with us, Congressman Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida's 9th Congressional District.
If we want to avoid a future of "cheap labor and debt slavery," then we have to fight back, and fight back now, before it's too late. To see the video, or to support our "Truth in Trade" campaign, click right here.
SEE BELOW FOR THE 1001STTIME THE REITERATION OF DEMAND PAYMENT OF RETIREMENT PAY WHICH SHELL REFUSED TO HONOR IN THE PRESENCE AND DEEMED APPROVAL OF THE HONORABLE MAGISTRATES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE PHILIPPINES
Saturday 9 May 2015
Yereth Rosen
DAN HEALING, CALGARY HERALD
