Energy, Mining & Utilities

Bolivia has been rocked by protests against a proposed gas pipeline to be built by Pacific LNG. The consortium is made up of notorious British and Spanish multinationals, including BP and Repsol-YPF. Read More

The residents of Mecosta County and the surrounding areas in central Michigan regard water as central to their identity. They fish for trout and watch ospreys and eagles feeding in the streams. They spend warm days by the ponds and small lakes that dot the woodlands. And of course the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, are a constant presence. So when a huge multinational bottled water company decided to move in and start pumping over half a million gallons of water a day out of the springs that feed their lakes and streams, the residents took it personally. Read More

San Francisco On Sunday, June 1, Direct Action to Stop the War kicks off a week of activities culminating in protests at Bechtels headquarters in San Francisco and offices throughout the country. Activists will expose Bechtels role in both instigating and profiting off of the war against Iraq at the expense of both the Iraqi and American people. The activist demand that the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people take precedence over corporate profits in the rebuilding effort and that the corporate invasion of Iraq and the Middle East be stopped. Read More

The EU Water Fund, to be presented at the G8 summit in Evian, seems more about corporate welfare than helping the world's poorest. The EU plan builds on controversial proposals by former IMF director Michel Camdessus, to use aid money to subsidise the expansion of private water corporations. Confidential documents obtained by CEO show how the European Commission has worked in tandem with Suez and other giant water corporations in developing its international water initiatives. Read More

Calling for transparency in multi-million dollar government contracts, Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Friday strongly urged that congressional hearings be held to examine in detail the no-bid contract awarded to a Halliburton Corporation subsidiary to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires. Read More

Responding to a request from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut and a candidate for president, the inspector general of the Interior Department is investigating possible conflicts of interest involving a top Interior official who used to be a lobbyist for the oil, gas and mining interests he now regulates. Read More

LAGO AGRIO, ECUADOR: ChevronTexaco will face off against indigenous Ecuadorians in an Ecuadorian court and the stakes are massive. On May 6th, attorneys representing more than 30,000 Ecuadorian rainforest peoples will file suit in Lago Agrio, a small oil town in the heart of Ecuador's Oriente region, charging the petroleum giant with systematically destroying their homeland through massive dumping of highly toxic wastewater and crude oil over the two decades of the company's operations in Ecuador. Read More

Bechtel has also played a major role in construction for the fossil fuel economy and the mining industry. Today as we lurch into a world where climate change has become a daily reality because of our over-consumption of fossil fuels Bechtel must take a share of the blame having built quite a few of the nation's as well as the world's major oil and natural gas production facilities and pipelines. Read More

Multinational corporations vie for a share of the American water market, and if they are given the opportunity, affordable drinking water may soon be a thing of the past. From Stockton, to Atlanta, to Cochabamba, Bolivia, privatization has proven a risky business with far-reaching consequences. Read More

Venezuela's state oil monopoly, PDVSA, one of the biggest companies in the Southern Hemisphere, is facing the challenge of holding onto its status as one of the world's leading oil firms after a two-month lockout that crippled output and the dismissal of nearly half of the company's executives. Read More