Environment

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

Villagers in Boghé, a community 190 miles south west of the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott, are protesting a proposed $1 billion investment by the Saudi National Prawn Company (NPC) in an aquaculture project in the Senegal river valley that will cover 31,000 hectares. 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

AquaBounty, a U.S. biotechnology company based in Maryland, has secured approval from the Canadian government to export 100,000 AquAdvantage salmon eggs from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada to Chiriquí province in western Panama. Read More

A clash between Belaruskali and Uralkali - the global potash exporters from Belarus and Russia respectively - almost destroyed a global cartel that has artificially kept prices of fertilizer as high as $400 a ton in international markets. Read More

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. Read More

BSGR, an Israeli mining conglomerate, is under investigation for the acquisition of mining rights to the Simandou iron ore deposit in Guinea, said to be the biggest in the world. Read More

ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant, has been ordered to hand over documents about the environmental impact of two South African facilities to community activists. The Luxembourg-based company, the largest steel producer in Africa, has been accused of polluting the air and water as well as dumping hazardous waste. Read More