Energy, Mining & Utilities

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The giant Dutch bank ABN Amro, one of the world's largest financial institutions, is facing charges of "environmental hypocrisy" from green groups concerned over the bank's possible financing for a controversial Russian oil extraction project. Read More

The leader of Bolivia on Thursday ruled out compensating oil companies for nationalized oil and gas fields as he came under questioning from European officials at the start of a high-level meeting on energy and trade. Read More

Entergy, one of the largest utilities in the U.S., has enjoyed healthy profits since Hurricane Katrina. Yet its New Orleans subsidiary has filed for bankruptcy, and frightened ratepayers with visions of bills bloated to 140% of their pre-storm size. Now the Fortune 500 company is threatening to pull the plug on New Orleans if it doesn't get a $700 million-plus federal bailout it doesn't actually need. Read More

The presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela confirmed their interest in moving together towards regional energy integration, in a summit held Thursday in the northeastern Argentine province of Misiones to discuss the impact of the Bolivian government's decision to reassert state control over the country's energy resources. Read More

Three years after Chad began exporting its oil with assistance from the World Bank, few people outside the capital have access to electricity, running water, paved roads, and health clinics. Public schools are nonexistent. Life expectancy is 46 years for men, and only slightly longer for women. Read More

Local communities in Nigeria are taking the World Bank before an internal auditor over claims that the lender neglected its duties and anti-poverty mission when it funded a controversial gas pipeline in the region, whose construction they say will harm the environment and area residents. Read More

With the melting of the ice after eight months, Shell is set to enter a crucial offshore construction phase in the development of its $20bn [£11.2bn] oil and gas programme. Wildlife campaigners say the price of the pipeline could be the extinction of a species of whale. Read More

Backers of a multibillion-dollar proposal to ship vast stores of liquid natural gas from Peru's Amazonian rain forest to the United States are seeking Bush administration support for international financing, but environmental questions are complicating the bid. Read More

British scientists are at loggerheads with US colleagues over a controversial plan to work alongside oil companies to hunt for fossil fuel reserves in the Arctic. Read More