Energy, Mining & Utilities
Senate Democrats demanded on Wednesday that several oil executives explain statements they made to Congress last week about their ties to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
Nigeria's petroleum industry may not benefit from the bombardment of Iraq by the United Stated-led coalition after ethnic clashes last week forced multi-national companies to shut down of operations in Warri, one of the major oil-producing cities in the Niger Delta region.
While Iraq represents bloodshed and death on a massive scale to most people, to Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) it has brought a boom time, boosting the revenues of British-based PMSCs alone from ã320 million in 2003 to more than ã1.8 billion in 2004. In the same year income for the industry worldwide reached $100 billion.
Mauritanian leaders and Australia's Woodside Petroleum have still to reach agreement over contracts, a fortnight before an oil production deal starts.
YPF, the Argentinian state-owned oil company, has signed an agreement with Chevron in the U.S. to extract shale gas and oil using fracking technology in the southern Andes mountains. Local environmental and indigenous activists are gearing up for a fight to stop the controversial technology.
KENNETH L. LAY and his second in command, Jeffrey K. Skilling, were the public faces of Enron, painting a rosy picture of strong profits and healthy businesses. But as the facts began to tumble out, in the fall of 2001, the company swiftly collapsed, taking with it the fortunes and retirement savings of thousands of employees.
A US court has almost halved the damages oil giant Exxon Mobil must pay for a 1989 oil spill off Alaska.
The Ugandan parliament will soon have a hearing on the draft Plant Variety Protection Bill, approved by the cabinet early last year. According to an inside government source, seeds companies including Monsanto have been lobbying for such intellectual property protection.
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.
United Nations sanctions against Saddam Hussein may have failed to end his regime but they succeeded in enriching both the Iraqi dictator and corporations able to manipulate the scandal-ridden world body's Oil-for-Food program. Among the profiteers was the Australian Wheat Board, a former state-owned monopoly, which funneled over $200 million into Saddam's coffers even as the "Coalition of the Willing" was preparing for invasion.