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Archive for October 11th, 2012
United States: Industry-Funded Study Finds Fracking Safe for Los Angeles
Posted by Bloomberg: Jim Efstathiou Jr on October 11th, 2012
Bloomberg: Fracking for oil in Los Angeles County poses no threat to the environment and doesn’t add to the risk of earthquakes, according to a report funded by the owner of one of the largest urban oil fields in the U.S.
The findings come from a yearlong study by Plains Exploration & Production Co. (PXP), owner of the Inglewood oil field in the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of two test wells revealed no threat to groundwater, air quality or added risk of induced...
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Nigeria: Ogoniland Oil Spills: Dutch Case Against Shell to Begin
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
BBC: The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has rejected claims by four Nigerian farmers that it should pay compensation for damage to their land.
The farmers are suing the company in a civil court in The Hague, claiming oil spills ruined their livelihoods.
Shell's lawyers told the court it could not be held liable because most spills were caused by criminal damage.
They said repairs were hard to carry out because of insecurity in the Niger Delta.
Shell lawyer Jan de Bie Leuveling Tjeenk told the...
CO2 May Fragment Glaciers, Driving Ice Into the Sea Faster
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
Climate Central: Scientists expect sea level to go up by 3 feet or so by the end of this century, thanks mostly to changes in the great ice sheets that dominate Greenland and Antarctica -- but they worry about unknown factors that might drive ice into the sea faster than projected. Now a pair of MIT scientists has identified what might, in theory, turn out to be one of these "unknown unknowns.'
In a study released Wednesday in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, Zhao Qin and Markus Buehler show that carbon...