Put A Tyrant in Your Tank. By Joshua Kurlantzick, Mother Jones, May/June, 2008. "Anyone inclined to celebrate Big Oil's recent misfortunes had better hold off... For however badly the Western firms may have behaved, the new global oil barons could one day leave environmental and social activists nostalgic for the bad old days of ExxonMobil... State-run oil companies make Shell and ExxonMobil look like Greenpeace. The multinational firms may cozy up to nasty regimes, but they are at least obligated to respond to public criticism. Shell releases detailed annual reports about its sustainability efforts, and most of its peers have signed on to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a voluntary compact designed to reduce corruption in countries with oil and gas investments. Embracing some environmental issues helps the firms win favor from shareholders and the public, which is why BP, for one, has put a huge PR push behind its modest initiatives to combat global warming... The national concerns, by contrast, behave with near impunity."
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