Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Analysis: War may be winding down, but with Assad in charge for seven more seven years the country remains splintered
Standing on a podium on Saturday to take an oath of office, Bashar al-Assad declared himself the only man who could rebuild Syria.
His first foreign guest, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, seemed to enhance his claim, endorsing the president’s win in a May poll described by Britain and Europe as “neither free nor fair” and laying a marker to help get the job started.
An underwater gas leak caused a whirling vortex of fire to spew out of the ocean surface west of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on 3 July. The fire began in an underwater pipeline connected to a platform owned by the state oil company Pemex. The fire took more than five hours to put out and no injuries were reported
Projects that could produce more than 1.7bn barrels will not have to go through the government’s ‘checkpoint’, data reveals
Prospective oil projects in the North Sea with the capacity to produce more than a billion barrels will avoid a new test designed to assess their impact on the climate crisis, the Observer has learned.
In a development that has angered environmental campaigners, it has emerged that proposed new developments representing some 1.7bn barrels of oil will not have to undergo the forthcoming “climate compatibility checkpoint”, designed to determine whether they are consistent with the government’s climate commitments.
Exploratory project in Botswana and Namibia is threat to ecosystems, local communities and wildlife, conservationists say
Tens of thousands of African elephants are under threat from plans for a massive new oilfield in one of the continent’s last great wildernesses, experts have warned.
Campaigners and conservationists fear the proposed oilfield stretching across Namibia and Botswana would devastate regional ecosystems and wildlife as well as local communities.
Tiny hedge fund Engine No 1 says a strong climate strategy simply makes good business sense
The activist hedge fund behind ExxonMobil’s boardroom coup last week has claimed another seat from the oil giant’s board, to take the number of new directors who will push for climate action from within the company to three.
The result of last week’s shareholder vote has installed the hedge fund, named Engine No 1 after a San Francisco fire station, as a reluctant hero of the climate movement.
In spite of green rhetoric, money has piled into aviation and car industries since start of pandemic, report finds
The nations that make up the G7 have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than they have into clean energy since the Covid-19 pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery.
As the UK prepares to host the G7 summit, new analysis reveals that the countries attending committed $189bn to support oil, coal and gas between January 2020 and March 2021. In comparison, the same countries – the UK, US, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and Japan – spent $147bn on clean forms of energy.
Court and investor defeats over carbon emissions a historic turning point, say campaigners and lawyers
A “cataclysmic day” for three major oil companies in which investors rebelled over climate fears and a court ordered fossil fuel emissions to be slashed has sparked hope among campaigners, investors, lawyers and academics who said the historic decisions marked a turning point in efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
A Dutch court on Wednesday ordered Shell to cut carbon emissions from its oil and gas by 45% by 2030. A tiny activist investor group simultaneously won two places on ExxonMobil’s board and Chevron’s management was defeated when investors voted in favour of forcing the group to cut its carbon emissions.
Plastic Waste Makers index identifies those driving climate crisis with virgin polymer production
Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals.
Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world’s plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis.
Voting at the oil giant’s annual meeting this week could see Follow This activists making trouble over emissions
Shell is braced for its largest climate rebellion this week as shareholders face the choice between backing the oil giant’s carbon-cutting plans or siding with an activist investor who is calling for tougher emissions targets.
With its annual meeting planned for Tuesday, the Anglo-Dutch company has called on its investors to vote against a shareholder resolution from campaign group Follow This in favour of its own plans to reduce its emissions to “net zero” by 2050.
While the governor says the line is a ‘ticking time bomb’, the company says Line 5 has never experienced a leak
The state of Michigan has told a Canadian energy company it must shut down a controversial oil and gas pipeline by Wednesday amid growing fears that a spill would be catastrophic to the region, in a feud which threatens to strain relations between Canada and the United States.
The company’s refusal to comply with the order, and swift support from top Canadian officials,highlights the politicized nature of pipelines, which campaigners have used as a target in the fight against climate change.
Biden administration scrambles to avoid shortages after Colonial Pipeline targeted in worst-ever attack on US infrastructure
The Biden administration has invoked emergency powers as part of an “all-hands-on-deck” effort to avoid fuel shortages after the worst-ever cyber-attack on US infrastructure shut down a crucial pipeline supplying the east coast.
The federal transport department issued an emergency declaration on Sunday to relax regulations for drivers carrying gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products in 17 states and the District of Columbia. It lets them work extra or more flexible hours to make up for any fuel shortage related to the pipeline outage.
Expansion will stretch hundreds miles and is fiercely opposed by numerous groups – but despite repeated calls the Canadian government has not forced the pipeline reveal its insurers
Nestled in the harbors of Vancouver, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation has lived for thousands of years within an inlet set against the mountain views of the Pacific north-west.
But across the water from Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s reserve, less than 2km away, or a little over a mile, is a jarring juxtaposition: an industrial terminal for the large Trans Mountain oil pipeline.
State news agency says fatal fire broke out after ambush thought to have involved drone
At least three people died when an Iranian fuel tanker was attacked off Syria’s coast on Saturday, in the first assault of its kind since the Syrian civil war started a decade ago, a war monitor said.
“At least three Syrians were killed, including two members of the crew,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Activists say the ‘heart of Africa’ line shipping crude from Uganda to Tanzania is unnecessary and poses a huge environmental risk
Activists have accused French and Chinese oil firms of ignoring huge environmental risks after the signing of accords on the controversial construction of a £2.5bn oil pipeline.
Uganda, Tanzania and the oil companies Total and CNOOC signed three key agreements on Sunday that pave the way for construction to start on the planned east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP). But on Tuesday a letter signed by 38 civil society organisations across both east African countries said the parties had failed to address environmental concerns over the pipeline and had steamrollered over court and parliamentary processes.
Analysis: 12% of global shipping uses the canal with any delays disrupting supply chains, fuelling shortages and hiking prices
World trade’s pre-eminent shortcut – the Suez Canal – is facing “massive” disruption which could cause cargo delays around the globe, shipping experts warned on Friday.
The narrow, 120-mile passage of water linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean allows ships of colossal proportions to navigate a relatively direct route from Asia to Europe, rather than taking a 3,500-mile diversion around Africa.
Two tankers flying the flag of the remote Pacific archipelago are alleged to have been involved in subterfuge shipping of Iranian oil
Two tankers flying the flag of the Cook Islands have been scrubbed from the islands’ shipping registry after allegations the vessels were sanctions-busting, transporting Iranian crude oil while concealing their movements.
US sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas sector have, somewhat improbably, caught up the tiny Cooks archipelago on the other side of the world.
World’s biggest investor wants polluting industries to set targets to cut emissions and reach net zero
BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has said that oil companies and other polluting industries should disclose their carbon emissions and set targets to cut them, in the latest sign of the rapid reassessment of climate risks by asset managers.
All companies in which BlackRock invests will be expected to disclose direct emissions from operations and from energy they buy, known respectively as scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, the investment firm said in a letter outlining its plans.
Back to bitcoin... and a senior US central banker has insisted that the cryptocurrency doesn’t present a serious threat to the US dollar’s position.
St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC that the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency was safe:
“I just think for Fed policy, it’s going to be a dollar economy as far as the eye can see — a dollar global economy really as far as the eye can see — and whether the gold price goes up or down, or the bitcoin price goes up or down, doesn’t really affect that.
“You don’t want to go to a non-uniform currency where you’re walking into Starbucks and maybe you’ll pay with Ethereum, maybe you’ll pay with Ripple, maybe you’ll pay with bitcoin, maybe you’ll pay with a dollar. That isn’t how we do this. We have a uniform currency that came in at the Civil War time.”
Bitcoin poses no threat to the dollar as the world's currency leader, Fed's Bullard says https://t.co/vc0gwcXYd4
It’s also been an exciting day for Italian government bonds.
Rome sold debt at near record-low interest rates today, as investors flocked to the first bond auction since former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi became prime minister.
Rome is set to raise a total of €14bn ($17bn) from the sale of a 10-year nominal bond and a 30-year inflation-linked note, one of the banks managing the issue said, adding demand had totalled more than €82bn.
The final size of the order book is well below the record €134bn in demand the two bonds had initially attracted, with many investors dropping out after Italy cut the return on the issues.
Draghi sells! #Italy attracted >€110bn of investor bids for a new 10y bond it’s offering in a publicly-syndicated sale which is the first since Mario Draghi took over as PM. (via BBG) pic.twitter.com/j7s1YfM5oT