Energy, Mining & Utilities

A coalition of national and community environmental groups has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to overturn a new rule that allegedly allows refineries and other industrial plants to emit higher levels of noxious chemicals when starting up, shutting down and experiencing equipment malfunctions, without informing area residents. Read More

The new sentence a federal judge imposes on a former Dynegy Inc. executive could provide some insight into how he'll approach the October sentencings of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling. Read More

Once again, the government has been compelled to suspend work on the Maheshwar dam over the Narmada River in central India. Read More

Danny Williams may be a multimillionaire and a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, but these days he is being compared to a self-proclaimed revolutionary, the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. Read More

British companies with global operations face a growing threat of being sued in the US over their dealings with foreign governments accused of human rights violations, a leading lawyer has warned. Read More

To commemorate World Day Against Child Labour, BBC News has spent a day with child miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who work for about one dollar per day. At Ruashi mine, in the Eastern province of Katanga, almost 800 children dig for copper and cobalt. Read More

Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming. Read More

Two Merrill Lynch executives convicted for their roles in a Nigerian barge deal that inflated Enron's profits have been ordered released from prison pending their appeal. Read More

The oil giant BP is under criminal investigation in the US for a big oil spill in Alaska in March that has raised fresh questions about the company's safety record. Read More

The federal government and Alaska said today that they would seek to get the Exxon Mobil Corporation to pay an additional $92 million to clean up the lingering effects of the 1989 oil spill caused by the crash of the tanker Exxon Valdez. Read More