Enbridge, operator of the world’s largest crude oil pipeline system, focuses on carrying petroleum from Western Canada—including the notorious tar sand fields of Alberta—to refineries in Ontario and the U.S. Midwest. It and its affiliates have other pipelines in several parts of Canada and United States and operate Canada’s largest natural gas distribution company. In July 2010 the company’s U.S. subsidiary Enbridge Energy Partners L.P.
BP (formerly British Petroleum) has become one of the world’s most controversial giant corporations because of its involvement in a series of major environmental and industrial accidents. The company has been the target of intense criticism for its role in the April 2010 explosion at a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and caused an underwater leak that has spewed millions of gallons of crude oil into the ocean, creating the most serious environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Chevron, once part of the Standard Oil empire, has grown over the past quarter century into the world’s fourth largest petroleum company, thanks to a series of ambitious acquisitions: Gulf Oil in 1984, Texaco in 2001 and Unocal in 2005. The purchase of Texaco brought with it a massive environmental lawsuit that has dragged on for more than a decade. This is only one of a host of controversies surrounding Chevron’s environmental and human rights record around the world.
A sarcastic poke at the management culture of BP and how they deal with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in U.S. Gulf region.
Anadarko Petroleum has used internal expansion and bold acquisitions to become one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in the world. In 2010 it found itself caught up in controversies stemming from an oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, both because it is a minority (25%) owner of the BP well involved and because its own deepwater drilling operations are among those now viewed as being very risky.
South African-based Sasol (South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation) is an integrated energy and chemicals company in the business of mining, oil, gas, and chemical production. It uses a proprietary process to convert coal and gas into liquid fuels and chemicals.
Syncrude Canada is one of the leading players in the big, dirty business of extracting oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta. It is a joint venture owned by an investment trust and a group of six U.S., Canadian and Japanese oil companies, among them the Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil. The company has been targeted by environmental groups because of its large volume of greenhouse gas emissions, but Syncrude has experienced a higher degree of controversy over an incident in 2008 in which some 1,600 ducks were killed at one of the company waste ponds.
Production at Canada’s largest petroleum company is dominated by the highly controversial process of extracting crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta. Suncor has invested billions of dollars—and plans to invest many billions more—to make North America more energy independent, but uses methods that generate large quantities of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Suncor, which in 2009 swallowed its competitor Petro-Canada, says it is trying to reduce those emissions, but the company is still a target of frequent climate protests by groups such as Greenpeace.
One of the key companies in the family promoted Jindal Group, JSPL has grown from a moderately performing company in the steel sector to the largest sponge iron manufacturer in the world. Steered by Naveen Jindal, a Member of Parliament (2009), and one of four heirs to the business founded by his father, O.P. Jindal, JSPL realised a 2008 turnover in excess of $2 billion (Indian Rupee 100 billion. US $1 = Rs.
Premier Oil is a relatively small company devoted entirely to the "upstream" sector of the industry, the exploitation of oil and gas, as opposed to the "downstream'" refining and retail sector. Premier Oil has license interests in eight countries: Albania, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar, Netherlands, Pakistan and the UK.
