PILOT Group
The Oil and Gas Industry Task Force 2 (OGITF) is known as the PILOT Group. Several members of Task Force 1 carried on into the PILOT Group: Malcolm Brinded, Tom Smith, Sir Ian Wood and James McCallum (all profiled on the previous page). John McDonald, also a member of Task Force 1, has become one of the 'Industry Leadership Team' of PILOT, an extension of the main task force.
Most of the current taskforce is made up of the executive of the UK Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA), the representative organisation for the bosses of companies that make up the UK offshore oil and gas industry - all but one of the UKOOA executive sat on the Task Force. Where OGITF 1 had one token trade unionist, Bobby Buirds of the AEEU, OGITF 2 has none.
People
- Paul Blakeley - director and general manager of Talisman Energy UK Ltd and executive officer of the UK Offshore Operators Association. Blakeley is the Director and General Manager of Talisman Energy UK. Talisman, a Canadian-based company, operates in the North Sea, Canada, Indonesia and Sudan. The Sudanese Government (based in the north of Sudan) is a genocidal regime that has been waging a civil war against the population of the south of the country, enslaving women and children, bombing hospitals and killing over a million people. Talisman is a financial partner of the Sudanese Government, their oil project providing funds for Sudan's estimated $1 million a day war effort. Talisman have built a 1,600 km pipeline from their oil fields in south-central Sudan where the local population has been cleared off the land with slave raids, tanks and planes. The pipeline goes to Port Sudan in the north, providing oil export earnings which Sudanese officials have admitted go to finance weapons factories.
- Mike Mannering is the Managing Director of Schlumberger UK. Schlumberger sell drilling products and services to the oil industry.
- David Cassie is the Managing Director of Coflexip Stena Offshore Ltd, who provide underwater products and services, including pipelines and pipeline laying.
- Ian Craig, Technical Director of Enterprise Oil plc and Executive Officer of UKOOA.
- AMEC - Mike Straughen, Managing Director of AMEC Services, the company's offshore, rail, utilities and telecommunications secors.
- David Cassie, Managing Director of Coflexip Stena Offshore Ltd.
- BP Amoco's Steve Marshall, Regional President of BP Amoco and Executive Officer of UKOOA.
The Extended Industry Leadership Team Leaders are:
- Joe Groger - Managing Director, Veba (member of UKOOA Executive. Germany's largest service station and refinery operators, part of the E.ON Group, the world's largest private energy provider)
Dave Smith - President, Marathon Oil (President of the UKOOA. Marathon is a huge US oil and gas producer)
- Mike Fry - Director of Production, Esso (member of UKOOA Executive. Esso was responsible for the 1989 Exxon Valdez supertanker disaster)
- George Watkins - Managing Director, Conoco (member of UKOOA Executive. US oil and gas producer with revenues of $27 billion in 1999)
- Mike Salter - CEO, Abbott Group/KCA Drilling (one of Shell's biggest North Sea drilling contractors)
- Doug Grimes - Vice President UK, Haliburton Brown & Root AOC
- Dennis Clark - Managing Director, Hydrocarbon Developments
- Paul Barron - UK President, GEC Alstrom Power
Following the blockades of Oil Refineries in September 2000, Tony Blair's Government created a new organisation, the Fuel Supply Task Force, to 'maintain continuity of oil supply'. Despite the obvious collusion of the Oil Multinationals with the fuel tax protestors, New Labour brought in many of their old chums from the Oil and Gas Industry Task Forces. Represented on the Fuel Supply Task Force are:
BP - Shell - Esso - Conoco - Texaco and TotalFina Elf
(TotalFina operates in Burma, run by a brutal military dictatorship. Total paid the Burmese Government $200 million in taxes in 1996 and is described by opposition leader Aung Suu Kyi as 'the principal supporter of the Burmese military system'. A $1 billion Total gas pipeline to Thailand was built using slave and child labour in 1998)
Also on the Task Force are haulage companies:
- P & O Trans European (operators of the Spirit of Free Enterprise Ferry which sank at Zeebrugge)
- Hoyer UK (operators of the largest independent tanker fleet in the world)
- Exel Tankfreight plc (worldwide delivery and transport company valued at $5.8 billion)
