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Archive for February 1st, 2013
Canadian Oil Sands Profit Hit by Crude Price Gap
Posted by Canadian Press: Lauren Krugel on February 1st, 2013
Canadian Press: Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., which owns the biggest piece of the massive Syncrude oil sands mine in northern Alberta, posted a dip in fourth-quarter profits as its crude fetched a lower price.
The Calgary-based company says net income was $221-million, down from $232-million a year earlier.
The earnings amounted to 46 cents a share, down from 48 cents per share a year earlier and missing the average analyst estimate of 50 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Cash flow from operations...
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Kalamazoo Spill Was ‘Most Disgusting Thing,’ Says Michigan Resident
Posted by CBC: None Given on February 1st, 2013
CBC: No one in the small community of Battle Creek, Michigan knew that pipelines ran so close to their homes. That changed whenan Enbridge pipeline burst, spilling more than 3,000 cubic metres of Canadian oil sands bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. In interviews with CBC Radio One's On the Coast and All Points West, former Battle Creek resident, Michelle Barlond-Smith, says she was tipped off by the foul smell of the spill. "You could smell something," she said, " — combine gasoline, tar, fingernail...
US Ban On LNG Exports Would Violate WTO Rules: Experts
Posted by Reuters: Doug Palmer on February 1st, 2013
Reuters: The United States would violate global trade rules and damage its credibility if it decides to subsidize steel, chemical and other manufacturers by restricting exports of liquefied natural gas after years of pressing other countries like China to drop restrictions on natural resource exports, experts said.
"It would be hypocritical and contrary to WTO rules for the United States to impose restraints on the export of LNG while permitting unfettered domestic consumption of natural gas," said Gary...
U.S. Spring Crop Season Jeopardized as Drought Persists
Posted by Reuters: Carey Gillam on February 1st, 2013
Reuters: The unrelenting drought gripping key farming states in the U.S. Plains shows no signs of abating, and it will take a deluge of snow or rain to restore critical moisture to farmland before spring planting of new crops, a climate expert said on Thursday. "It's not a pretty picture," said climatologist Mark Svoboda of the University of Nebraska's Drought Mitigation Center. Precipitation in the Plains region has been 3-6 inches shy of normal levels since October, and some areas are nearly 16 inches...
India: Traditional Farming Holds All the Aces
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 1st, 2013
Inter Press Service: Last monsoon season, 65-year-old Sunadhar Ramaparia, a member of the Bhumia tribe in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, mixed indigenous crops like "˜para' paddy, foxtail millet and oil seeds in his upland plot.
The rains came, then played truant for 23 days and in the scorching heat even lowland farmers' hybrid paddy saplings burnt to dust. But Ramaparia harvested a full crop.
Deforestation and climate change have resulted in erratic rainfall, shrinking water bodies and severe soil degradation...
U.S. seeks greater ethanol use despite efforts to cut it
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 1st, 2013
Reuters: Corn ethanol would get a larger share of the U.S. gasoline market under a government proposal on Thursday while ranchers, environmentalists and the oil industry aim to kill the renewable fuels mandate altogether.
The Obama administration proposed a 9 percent increase in the so-called renewable fuels standard from 2012, in line with a 2007 law. Half of the 1.35 billion-gallon increase would go to corn ethanol and half to "advanced" biofuels that produce half the greenhouse gases of first-generation...
Planting trees may not reverse climate change but it will help locally
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 1st, 2013
EurekAlert: Afforestation, planting trees in an area where there have previously been no trees, can reduce the effect of climate change by cooling temperate regions finds a study in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management. Afforestation would lead to cooler and wetter summers by the end of this century.
Without check climate change is projected to lead to summer droughts and winter floods across Europe. Using REMO, the regional climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology,...