Energy, Mining & Utilities

Some 4,000 contract workers at Los Bronces copper mine in Chile went on strike against Anglo American, a UK-based mining multinational from South Africa. The strike is the latest in a series of protests against the Chilean copper industry, the world's largest producers of the metal. Read More

A whistleblower who previously worked for Ernst & Young, the international auditing firm, has alleged that his bosses turned a blind eye to discoveries that Kaloti Jewellery International - one of the world's biggest gold companies - dealt in minerals from undocumented sources that may have included conflict zones. Read More

Gazprom of Russia has begun fracking in western Siberia with the help of Anglo-Dutch giant Shell. The joint venture is introducing new technology developed in the U.S. to tap a vast reserve of oil known as the Bazhenov shale that lies under a 2.3 million square kilometer expanse. Read More

A major U.S. government report on the Keystone XL pipeline was written by oil industry consultants, say activist groups. The report, which was commissioned by the State Department and published two weeks ago, downplays the environmental impact of the pipeline and has been seen as key to potential approval. Read More

Bolivia has been ordered to pay $41 million to Rurelec, a UK energy company, in compensation for nationalizing the Guaracachi power plant in May 2010. The order represents a small profit for Rurelec which bought a 50.1 percent stake in 2006 but substantially less than what the company demanded. Read More

Shell's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea have been handed a major setback by a U.S appeals court which ruled that the Department of the Interior had underestimated the potential environment impact. The courts ordered the federal government to do a new assessment. Read More

Two climate activists who staged a protest at the headquarters of Devon Energy, a Fortune 500 company based in Oklahoma city, have been charged with a "terrorism hoax" after black powder drifted down from a banner that they unfurled. Read More

This past Christmas, while children around the world wrote letters to Santa Claus whom they believed would deliver presents to them in a sleigh drawn by the mythical Rudolph, the actual human companions of the Arctic reindeer spent their holidays worrying about Beowulf, a British mining company. Read More

A lawsuit against Victor Dahdaleh, a Canadian-British billionaire, for allegedly paying £39 million ($65 million) in bribes to win supply contracts worth £2 billion ($3.2 billion) from Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) has collapsed. Read More

Sierra Leone police opened fire on a group of protestors who were demonstrating against a palm oil plantation in the southern province of Pujehun. The project is being developed by Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a French agri-business giant. Read More