Search

The union activists suing U.S. coal company Drummond Co. Inc. in Alabama in the 2001 murders of three labor leaders say deliberate foot-dragging by Colombian authorities is preventing the jury from hearing their star witness. Concerned by the delay, 12 Democrats in the U.S. Congress wrote Colombia's vice president last week asking him to intercede.

Italian oil giant Eni has a long history of cutting deals with anyone, and of accusations of corruption and bribery. Now that its future hangs on Russia and its notorious reputation in the energy market, has Eni finally met its match?

Nigerian consortium Bluestar, led by tycoon Aliko Dangote, has pulled out of a deal to take stakes in oil refineries after protests by trade unionists.

A leading opponent of a Chinese-financed dam in Sudan accused Beijing on Friday of fueling widespread human rights abuses, as Khartoum moved to relocate 70,000 villagers to make way for the project.

For many other poor countries, like Nigeria and Chad, oil has been a poisoned bonanza, paradoxically dragging them into deeper poverty and corruption in what some call the oil curse.

There is no real dissent here in Rangoon. People are too scared to be members of any democratic movement. We are all just victims, people like me who are trying to get their lives back.' Ko Min, 47, his wife and two sons were swept up with hundreds of others in a military raid on their village close to the city of Bagan in 2005. The family were put to work, clearing jungle, digging latrines and an irrigation system for a military camp outside Mandalay. (mentions Zarubezhneft oil company)

A small, but growing, group of Diné indigenous peoples in New Mexico are protesting against a planned new huge coal-fired power plant. This is one of 150 similar plants scheduled to supply an anticipated boom in energy demand in the U.S.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for, but which has rattled labour unions and international campaigners who say oil production should remain in the hands of Iraqis.

• 204 Manufacturing

The week opened with the start of a four month trial against France's oil giant, Total, by groups like Friends of the Earth France.

The biggest oil spill Exxon Mobil has to answer for is not the cargo that gushed from the Exxon Valdez tanker into Alaska's Prince William Sound. It is the fuel that soaked into the ground beneath a working class section of Brooklyn, New York.