Video: As Texas withers, gas industry guzzles water

By Josh Harkinson1 September 2011 At Trinity Park, a popular picnic spot near downtown Fort Worth, Texas, a scorching summer has killed stately oaks and turned lawns into brittle moonscapes. On the park’s eastern edge, loud diesel generators pump some 4 million gallons of water from the Trinity River, though they’re not supplying the park […]

Saudi Arabia water needs eating into oil wealth

By Reem Shamseddine and Barbara Lewis; Editing by Daniel Fineren and Sonya Hepinstall7 September 2011 KHOBAR/LONDON (Reuters) – Long before it understood the value of oil, the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia knew the worth of water. But the leading oil exporter’s water challenges are growing as energy-intensive desalination erodes oil revenues while peak water […]

Fossil fuel industry outspends pro-environment groups by eight-fold in battle over climate change legislation

By Evan Mackinder 23 August 2010 It was supposed to be their time. With significant majorities in Congress, a president promising action and favorable public opinion all on their side, many environmentalists believed their political stars had properly — and finally — aligned.  Sensing the unique opportunity to address global warming on a national scale, […]

In polluted Nigeria region, an oil spill disaster long in the making

Bodo, Nigeria, August 16 (AFP)  – The air smells like poison, the creek water carpeted with crude, and the boat operator covers his nose as he steps on a jetty in a region hit by what may be the world’s worst oil contamination. “We have been living with this mess for years,” says 31-year-old Friday […]

Health study to look at long-term effects of oil spill on cleanup workers

By Guy Busby, Press-Register 1 September 2011 ORANGE BEACH, Alabama – Researchers want to include as many as one-third of the 150,000 cleanup workers in a national long-term study of the health effects of the exposure to the effects of the 2010 oil spill. On Wednesday, representatives from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute […]

Polar bear shot dead by BP guard in Alaska

By Richard Hall27 August 2011 British Petroleum has again drawn the ire of environmentalists after a security guard at one of its Alaskan oil fields shot dead a polar bear, an animal listed as threatened with extinction. A BP spokesman said the security guard shot the bear on 3 August after it approached employee housing. […]

Scientists: Oil fouling Gulf of Mexico matches Deepwater Horizon well

By Ben Raines, Press-Register 25 August 2011 MOBILE, Alabama – Scientific analysis has confirmed that oil bubbling up above BP’s sealed Deepwater Horizon well in recent days is a chemical match for the hundreds of millions of gallons of oil that spewed into the Gulf last summer. The Press-Register collected samples of the oil about […]

Oil discovered floating near source of BP Deepwater Horizon spill

By Ben Raines, Press-Register 24 August 2011 MOBILE, Alabama – Oil is once again fouling the Gulf of Mexico around the Deepwater Horizon well, which was capped a little over a year ago. Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen dotted the surface within a mile of the wellhead. With just a […]

In West Texas town, worst drought in 116 years leaves reservoir 99 percent dry – Local water wells contaminated by abandoned oil wells

By ALLAN TURNER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE15 August 2011 ROBERT LEE — […] With Texas gripped in a seemingly intractable drought that state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon has declared the worst single-year dry spell in 116 years, Robert Lee, population 1,106, has emerged as an alarming worst-case example of what scant rainfall and triple-digit temperatures can do. Since […]

Uncontacted Amazon tribes could be wiped out by drug traffickers and oil companies

By Gregor MacLennan11 August 2011 Brazilian officials fear for the survival of an isolated Amazon group after a remote guard post on the Peru-Brazil border was overrun by heavily armed suspected drug traffickers who crossed the border from Peru. The guard post was protecting the headwaters of the Envira river where stunning aerial photographs of […]

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