Fossil fuel mapping database results released

A new online mapping tool highlighting the 50 most influential fossil fuel industry players in Western Canada was launched today to help shed light on who's who in the oil resource sector.

Today, the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP) released its fossil-power top 50 listing, along with a publicly accessible database of the larger Canadian fossil fuel industry that maps its connections to the wider corporate sector in Canada and globally.

"Knowledge is a catalyst for change," says William Carroll, University of Victoria professor of sociology and co-director of the project. "The CMP allows us to investigate and monitor how corporate power is organized and exercised, in and around the fossil fuel sector."

The CMP runs the six-year research and public engagement initiative—the Mapping the Power of the Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector project—jointly led by UVic, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (BC & Saskatchewan offices) and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute.

Carroll says the fossil fuel industry, "whose economic interests are served by continued expansion of oil and gas production, is the biggest obstacle to real action on climate change today."

The development of a public, open source database was one of four key areas for the project announced in November 2015.