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Archive for September 22nd, 2011
Vast reserves of shale gas revealed in UK
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 22nd, 2011
Guardian: The huge scale of a natural gas field discovered under the north-west of England has been revealed, potentially revolutionising the UK's energy outlook and creating thousands of jobs, but environmental groups are alarmed at the controversial method by which the gas is extracted.
Preliminary wells drilled around Blackpool have uncovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas - equal to the kind of recoverable reserves of big energy exporting countries such as Venezuela, according to Cuadrilla Resources,...
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Guyana: Amaila Falls road project should be halted, re-examined
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 22nd, 2011
Stabroek News: In light of recent revelations that external consultants have found that the original specifications for the Amaila Falls access road were poorly designed, AFC presidential candidate Khemraj Ramjattan has called for the project to be immediately halted and re-examined.
“There must be an immediate halt and a total re-examination of the whole project,” Ramjattan told Stabroek News recently, adding that it is clear from the consultants’ report that the project could have fundamental flaws. He said...
Oxfam warns of spiralling land grab in developing countries
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 22nd, 2011
Guardian: The scale of the rush by speculators, pension funds and global agri-businesses to acquire large areas of developing countries is far greater than previously thought, and is already leading to conflict, hunger and human rights abuses, says Oxfam. The NGO has identified 227m ha (561m acre ha) of land – an area the size of north-west Europe – as having being reportedly sold, leased or licensed, largely in Africa and mostly to international investors in thousands of secretive deals since 2001. This...
Hands off our land: a chink of light from No 10
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 22nd, 2011
Telegraph: Say what you like about David Cameron, but he does seem to understand what Denis Healey calls "The First Law of Holes': "When you are in one, stop digging'.
While colleagues, including Chancellor George Osborne and Community Secretary Eric Pickles, reacted to their predicament over planning "reforms' by laying down their spades only to leap on to mechanical diggers, the Prime Minister has for some days now been looking around for a ladder.
Yesterday, he tried leaning one tentatively against...
Keystone pipeline lobbyist works all the angles with former colleagues
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson on September 22nd, 2011
Washington Post: In lobbying for a presidential permit to construct a massive oil pipeline stretching from Canada to the Gulf Coast, TransCanada’s Paul Elliott has tried nearly every angle.
Elliott — who served as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s national deputy campaign manager in 2008 — sought to broker multiple meetings between senior State Department officials and TransCanada executives. He offered to enlist TransCanada officials’ aid in helping State officials forge an international climate agreement....