Alberta oil sands spills have been going on for weeks with no end in sight – ‘This is a new kind of oil spill and there is no off button’

By Emma Pullman and Martin Lukacs 19 July 2013 (The Toronto Star) – Oil spills at a major oil sands operation in Alberta have been ongoing for at least six weeks and have cast doubts on the safety of underground extraction methods, according to documents obtained by the Star and a government scientist who has […]

Ecuador abandons plan to stave off drilling in Amazon rainforest – ‘It was not charity that we sought from the international community, but co-responsibility in the face of climate change’

QUITO, 15 August 2013 (Associated Press) – Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has abandoned a unique and ambitious plan to persuade rich countries to pay his country not to drill for oil in a pristine Amazon rainforest preserve. Environmentalists had hailed the initiative when Correa first proposed it in 2007, saying he was setting a precedent […]

Military crackdown worsens pollution in Nigeria oil region – ‘Security operatives blowing up things is causing more pollution’

By Yinka Ibukun16 August 2013 (Bloomberg) – The Nigerian government’s military crackdown against the theft of crude in the Niger River delta has left more than a 1,000 makeshift refineries in flames, worsening pollution in the area, authorities said. A military taskforce deployed last year to stop theft and protect facilities in Africa’s top oil […]

Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index: Top U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse emissions – U.S. government is number 4 biggest polluter

June 2013 (PERI) – PERI’s Greenhouse 100 index identifies the top companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The Greenhouse 100 relies on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which reports information from facilities in electric power and other industries that directly emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. In addition to the total […]

Texas fracking boom sucks away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry, and people thirsty – ‘When the water is gone. That’s it. We’re gone.’

Suzanne Goldenberg 11 August 2013 Barnhart, Texas    (The Guardian) – Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she […]

World’s largest nuclear plant operator exits U.S. market, turns to renewable energy – ‘It is simply not easy to invest in nuclear and recover your money there’

By Geert De Clercq30 July 2013 PARIS (Reuters) – French utility EDF, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, is pulling out of nuclear energy in the United States, bowing to the realities of a market that has been transformed by cheap shale gas. Several nuclear reactors in the U.S. have been closed or are […]

Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying evidence after Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS25 July 2013 HOUSTON (The New York Times) – Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destruction of critical evidence after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. The oil services company said it would pay the maximum allowable fine of $200,000 and will be subject […]

Forum: How daring is President Obama’s new climate plan?

President Obama has unveiled a proposal to combat global warming that would, for the first time, regulate carbon dioxide emissions from all U.S. coal-fired power plants. Yale Environment 360 asked a group of experts to assess the president’s climate strategy. 22 July 2013 (Yale Environment 360) – Stymied by Congress, and no longer weighed down […]

Gulf of Mexico oil sheen traced to wreckage of Deepwater Horizon rig

By Bettina Boxall 16 July 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – When oil sheen appeared on the sea surface last fall not far from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, authorities wanted to know where it was coming from. Was BP’s sealed Macondo well — the source of the biggest […]

Renowned whale expert studying effect of Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf of Mexico sperm whales – ‘Every step of the food chain you get about a 10 times increase in the concentration of a contaminant’

By Dennis Pillion12 July 2013 PENSACOLA, Florida (al.com) – To get a better understanding of the full impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, renowned marine scientist Roger Payne is thinking big. That is to say, he’s looking at sperm whales, one of the largest inhabitants of the Gulf and the largest of the […]

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