Financial Times – The world’s largest oil traders have quietly stopped supplying petrol to Iran in a clear sign that the threat of sanctions and Washington’s behind-the-scenes efforts to convince companies not to sell to Tehran are paying off. However, the decision by Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura is unlikely to cut Tehran off completely from the global petrol market as traders said Iran’s long-standing suppliers were being replaced by small Dubai-based and Chinese companies. Although Iran is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, its refineries are dilapidated and it suffers from runaway petrol demand because of generous subsidies. Read article
Associated Press – President Barack Obama made a renewed push for a long-stalled climate and energy bill Tuesday, urging lawmakers at a White House meeting to pass a comprehensive bill this year. Fourteen senators from both parties. Read Article
The Australian – WHEN Les Alcorn decided he wanted to take the world’s largest mining company to court, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. He also knew he and his wife, Margaret, would need the full support of the local community to protect their farm of 37 years from BHP Billiton’s exploration plans. Yesterday, Mr Alcorn’s worries turned to celebration as the 75-year-old cattle farmer from Quirindi, on the Liverpool Plains in NSW’s mid-north, savoured a landmark decision handed down in the Supreme Court on Friday. Read Article
Bloomberg — BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. took the best deal they could get in Iraq last year when they won the largest oil contracts since addam Hussein was toppled in 2003. Oil companies may wait a long time to get a better one. Parliamentary elections may produce a weak or unstable government incapable of tendering new oil contracts, said Samuel Ciszuk, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight. He said he does expect the 10 technical-services contracts won by Exxon, BP and 20 other companies to be honored. Read Article
Times Online – Argentina was celebrating a diplomatic coup yesterday in its attempt to force Britain to accept talks on the future of the Falkland Islands, after a two-hour meeting in Buenos Aires between Hillary Clinton and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Responding to a request from Mrs Kirchner for “friendly mediation” between Britain and Argentina, Mrs Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she agreed that talks were a sensible way forward and offered “to encourage both countries to sit down”. Read article
Times of India – Opposition leader Manohar Parrikar has lambasted the state government, alleging that it is abetting deforestation even as rampant illegal mining continues. “For the past three years alone, 1,500 hectares of forest land has been converted to mining land. The forest department should be renamed as the de-forestation department,” Parrikar told the media at a press conference here on Thursday. “From statistics made available to me, about 18 to 22 per cent of iron ore exported from the state is being extracted from illegal mines. Goa is currently exporting 43 million tonnes of iron ore, which is double to the quantity of exports in 2005. The government is unable to give an account of the source of ore for more than 33 million tonnes,” Parrikar said. He also said that chief minister Digambar Kamat should be made accountable for growing illegalities in the mining sector. Read Article
The diplomatic row over the Falkland Islands deepened dramatically after Argentina announced that it would take its protests over British oil exploration to the United Nations today. At the Rio Group summit in Mexico yesterday, Buenos Aires won unprecedented support from other Latin American states for its demand that the UK stop drilling in waters near the islands. Read article
Argentina has formally asked United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to bring the UK into talks over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said he had asked Mr Ban to help stop “further unilateral acts” by the UK. Read article
De Spiegel – This week the United Nations released a report on the problems surrounding the recycling of electronic scrap, known as e-waste. Millions of tons of old computers and phones on the scrap heaps of the world contain more gold and silver than the average mine. What is needed is better and safer recycling. Mankind goes to an immense effort to extract metal from out of the ground. We dig holes thousands of meters deep into the earth, blow up mountains and dig laboriously in sand dunes. But in fact, there are much easier ways to find precious metals. There is a treasure trove of gold and silver stored in household and industrial trash — in discarded electrical devices, to be more exact. According to a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) around 40 million tons worth of electronics end up in the trash annually. Read Article
AP _ Mountaintop mining has obliterated flowering trees and plants that honeybees need for food in the central Appalachians, and some Kentucky lawmakers are asking coal companies to plant pollen-producing vegetation when they finish digging. A nonbinding measure passed Thursday in a House committee. Before the vote, Tammy Horn, a bee researcher at Eastern Kentucky University’s Environmental Research Institute, exhorted lawmakers to approve the measure that would “encourage” coal companies to plant a variety of nectar- and pollen-producers on mountains that have been deforested by mining. Read Article
Haaretz – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for an immediate embargo on Iran’s energy sector, saying the United Nations Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move. Iran’s uranium enrichment, in defiance of several rounds of Security Council sanctions, has spurred world powers to consider tougher diplomatic measures, against the backdrop of threatened military action by Israel as a last resort. Read article
AFP – Argentina was anticipating Monday to broaden regional support in its escalating row with Britain over the disputed Falkland Islands after winning immediate backing from Venezuela and Nicaragua. After losing a short but bloody war over the south Atlantic islands with Britain in 1982, Argentina is furious that the British are about to begin oil drilling operations in the potentially rich seabed around the archipelago. Read article
BBC – A British rig is due to begin drilling for oil in the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands, despite strong opposition from Argentina. The platform has been towed to a point 100km (62 miles) north of the islands in the South Atlantic. Argentina says the move violates its sovereignty and has imposed shipping restrictions around the islands. Read article
Reuters – A team of scientists said in a report on Friday that they had found the strongest evidence yet linking a devastating mud volcano in Indonesia to drilling at a gas exploration well by local energy firm PT Lapindo Brantas.Lapindo has denied triggering the disaster through its drilling activities, arguing the mud volcano near Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya was triggered by an earthquake. Read Article
ABC – Xstrata Mount Isa Mines in north-west Queensland says it is investigating the possibility that one of its air monitoring sites had a higher-than-allowable lead level last year. The Queensland Government has given the company until Monday to explain what action it has taken to fix the problem. Read Article
BBC – Argentina has imposed new controls on shipping to the Falkland Islands in a growing oil dispute with the UK. The Argentine government has ordered ships heading to the islands via its waters to apply for permission first. Read article
Reuters – Euro-priced gold extended earlier gains to hit a record high 816.35 euros an ounce on Tuesday, as investors spooked by fears over the fiscal health of peripheral euro zone economies bought the metal as a haven from risk. Read Article
Ed – Talking to a contact of Open Your Eyes News recently who is an executive of a major gold mining company, they are forecasting US$2000 by the end of 2010 in their budgets.
Telegraph – A row between Britain and Argentina over oil exploration off the Falkland Islands is threatening to escalate into a major diplomatic row after a ship carrying drilling equipment was blocked from leaving an Argentine port. Read article
Deutsche Welle – Some three billion people worldwide rely on dung, wood and charcoal to cook their food – with catastrophic effects on the environment. Cookers powered by the sun provide a cheap and clean alternative. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti recently, thousands of people need food and drinking water. But clean water in particular remains a problem. The quake damaged water pipes in many places and health experts warn that alternative water sources run the risk of being contaminated by bacteria. Boiled water is the only safe option but cooking involves several hardships in Haiti, because firewood used for cooking fires is either expensive or requires painstaking gathering. Read article
Guardian – Four British firms set to drill for oil north of Falkland Islands, in move Argentina calls a ‘violation of sovereignty’. It does not look like much: a jumble of pipes, containers and drilling equipment sitting on a windswept jetty at Port Stanley. The hardware, however, signals an imminent search for oil and gas that could turn the Falkland Islanders into south Atlantic oil barons, a prospect that has already triggered a dispute between Britain and Argentina. Read article
Montreal Gazette – The oilsands could wipe out threatened woodland caribou in northern Alberta if regulators fail to protect the boreal forest and its habitat, warn experts from government, industry and academia. In a letter sent today to the Stelmach and Harper governments, a conservation group said decision makers must listen to the advice of their own experts and restrict oilsands development in at least half the region. “It may not be easy, but we think it is possible for you to reconcile the interests of both habitat conservation and the industry in the oilsands area – if you take a clear stand and act decisively now,” said the letter, written by Helene Walsh of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Walsh noted the number of woodland caribou has dropped by nearly half since 1993 in the area where industry is concentrated. Read Article
AFP – Iran has taken steps to blunt possible future global and US sanctions, notably seeking out new sources of gasoline in China and Venezuela, the top US intelligence official said Tuesday. US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told key lawmakers that Tehran was “keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” but that existing sanctions had harmed the Islamic republic’s struggling economy. Read article
Press TV – British Justice Secretary Jack Straw is seeking to bypass Freedom of Information laws by refusing to publish details of his 2007 conversations with a BP lobbyist over Libya. The calls in question were made weeks before Straw reversed a government move to block the release of a man charged with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people. Reports on Sunday said Straw, a former defense minister, faces cover-up charges over his intransigence about calls he received from Sir Mark Allen, an ex-MI6 spy turned consultant to the British oil giant, BP. Read Article
Deutsche Welle – Ecuador’s proposal to have rich nations pay them not to drill for oil – in one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world – is under threat. President Correa accuses potential donor countries of setting too many rules. In no other nature reserve in the world is there so much plant and animal diversity as in Yasuni National Park, in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to a new scientific study published in the journal “PLoS ONE.” “These rainforests are extremely bio-diverse…scientists have counted more than 600 different tree species in just one hectare. It’s also the homeland of indigenous people,” Klaus Schenck of the German organization Rainforest Rescue told Deutsche Welle. But now its future appears to be in jeopardy after Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi – the man charged with the difficult task of protecting it – quit on Tuesday. Falconi had been spearheading a 2.5 billion-euro (3.5 billion-dollar) initiative, whereby wealthy countries would pay Ecuador not to drill for oil in the nature reserve. Read Article
Deutsche Welle – Drilling for oil and gas drags up huge amounts of natural radioactive waste from the earth. The disposal of this waste is barely regulated, and could spell environmental catastrophe, according to a new media report. Read Article
