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Venezuelan dirty crude is akin to Canadian tar sands, and hopefully sense will prevail in Caracas.

In Quito and Neuva Rocafuerte deep in the Amazon last week, I witnessed the most advanced eco-social battle for a nation's hearts-and-minds underway anywhere, with the extraordinary NGO Accion Ecologica insisting that Correa's grudging government leaves the oil in Yasuni National Park's soil. Because he was trained in neoclassical economics and hasn't quite recovered, Correa favours selling Yasuni forests on the carbon markets, which progressive ecologists reject in principle.

Another unexpected impediment to the arrival of energy’s next “golden age” in North America emerged even more unexpectedly from this summer’s record-breaking drought, which still has 80% of U.S. agricultural land in its grip.  The energy angle on all this was, however, a surprise.

If this year’s “endless summer” of unrelenting drought were just a fluke, and we could expect abundant water in the future, the golden age scenario might still be viable.  But most climate scientists suggest that severe drought is likely to become the “new normal” in many parts of the United States, putting the fracking boom very much into question. 

If the U.S. proves too tough a nut to crack, Alberta has a backup plan: construction of the Northern Gateway, a proposed pipeline through British Columbia for the export of tar sands oil to Asia.  However, it, too, is running into trouble.  Environmentalists and native communities in that province are implacably opposed and have threatened civil disobedience to prevent its construction (with major protests already set for October 22nd outside the Parliament Building in Victoria).

While output from unconventional oil operations in the U.S. and Canada is likely to show some growth in the years ahead, there is no “golden age” on the horizon, only various kinds of potentially disastrous scenarios.  Those like Mitt Romney who claim that the United States can achieve energy “independence” by 2020 or any other near-term date are only fooling themselves, and perhaps some elements of the American public. 

The drought’s impact on hydro-fracking became strikingly evident when, in June and July, wells and streams started drying up in many drought-stricken areas and drillers suddenly found themselves competing with hard-pressed food-producers for whatever water was available. 

Yet Idku remains defiant, even in the face of the Egyptian Liquefied Natural Gas  Project, a massive natural gas liquefaction facility on the nearby beach. The oil operations are run by two joint ventures Rashpetco and Burullus, whose shareholders include the British BG, Malaysian PETRONAS, French Gaz de France,  and the Egyptian state companies EGAS and EGPC .

Unfortunately, BP has not given up completely. Instead of recognising that it's not wanted, the company has moved to a new location futher east along the coast. Now the struggle moves to Mtubas  in Kafr elSheikh, the new proposed site for BP’s gas plant.

To day, these demands remain unmet. So when British Petroleum eyed Idku for an onshore natural gas processing plant, the community took matters into its own hand: it mobilized to stand up against the proposed project. Roads were blocked, a sit-in occupied the construction site, BP's office was raided and popular assemblies took place in the street. The organised local campaigning and resistance by the Idku community managed to halt BP’s plans.

The idea of leaving oil in the ground within the Yasuni forest was taken up in far away Ecuador by no less than the government of the country itself and is receiving widespread acceptance.

The world’s ecosystem is one and we have merely scratched the surface in understanding the intricate interconnectedness of nature at different levels. It is therefore short sighted to continue the reckless expansion of drilling around the world because in the long run the revenue we may earn today from oil extraction would not be sufficient to adequately return our environment to what it was before extraction when incidents like these occur.

We must begin by acknowledging that the sensible use of our ecosystem has the capacity in the long-term to provide much more benefits and revenue than oil can ever provide. We must individually and consciously take up the responsibility of drastically reducing our use of oil and its by-products. We must also set up international tribunals that would try entities and individuals for their role in destroying the ecosystem. But more importantly we must begin to have the consciousness and think along the lines of building capacities within our communities to ensure as much as possible that the role of oil our energy matrix becomes inconsequential by investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.

Yeah, I know a lot of jobs in the oil industry require technical skills and education. I grew up around the oil industry. My father was a petroleum engineer. But he started work as a roustabout.

Something is preventing Ghanaians from getting work and it’s hard for me to understand.  After all, the oil men who are hanging out at the hotel bar in Takoradi are mainly working class guys from Texas and Louisiana who are in Ghana via the Gulf of Mexico or E.G. (that’s Equatorial Guinea). What degrees do they have?

We perceive a matrix of high-powered players in the oil theft industry. This is far beyond pointing fingers at petty thieves who steal crude oil in buckets only to ferry them in crude barges to ships lurking off the coast.