Iraq urges oil companies to honor contracts

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraq's oil minister urged international oil companies to move swiftly with implementing their newly-awarded contracts in the country, while assuring them Sunday they have the government's full support in dealing with any obstacles.

Hussain al-Shahristani's call reflects the pressure Iraq faces as it struggles to rebuild following the U.S.-led 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Years of sanctions on the country, home to the world's third largest proven reserves of crude, ravaged its oil industry. Looting, sabotage and perennial security woes following the war battered the sector even more and stunted investor interest.

Kuwait could get 24.5-bln-dollar surplus if oil stays above 70 dpb

Oil-exporter Kuwait could get a budget surplus of 7 billion dinars (around 24.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the 2010-2011 fiscal year if crude prices stay above 70 dollars per barrel, the National Bank of Kuwait said in a report Saturday.

The report said the ebbing pessimism about the global economy would keep oil prices remain bullish, as was the case in the past six months, when the prices stayed at an average of 70 dollars.

Amid Tests, BP Sees No Signs of Damage to Well

As the Gulf of Mexico entered a third day free of fresh oil from BP’s blown-out well, the government on Saturday extended a test that has so far shown no signs of damage in the 13,000-foot-deep hole.

Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who commands the spill response, announced Saturday afternoon, 48 hours after the test began, that it would continue for an additional day. “We continue to see success,” he said in a statement.

Earlier, Kent Wells, a senior vice president of BP, said the company was encouraged by the results of the test, which is meant to assess the condition of the well by allowing pressure to build inside it.

U.S. Orders BP to Reopen Gulf Well and Capture Oil After Tests

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc was ordered by U.S. officials to open its sealed Macondo gusher in the Gulf of Mexico and resume capturing the escaping oil after it concludes tests on the well.

BP canvassing investors on possible break up - paper

(Reuters) - Under-fire oil company BP Plc has started canvassing shareholders about a restructuring in the wake of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill which could include a break up of the business, the Sunday Times reported.

The newspaper, citing unnamed BP insiders, said options included selling the group's refineries and petrol stations, scaling back its U.S. operations and ramping-up in-house engineering instead of outsourcing.

Iraq War Veterans Join Environmentalists in the Oiled Gulf of Mexico

I met Eckstein on a boat among the oiled waterways of southern Louisiana, where we'd come to see a once-hidden cost of crude that had suddenly made itself heartbreakingly visible: the Gulf oil spill. Eckstein, a handful of other Iraq veterans and even some and retired generals were in Louisiana as part of Operation Free, a young advocacy group that has begun pushing a green message not so much on environmental grounds, but on national security ones.

They point out that the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency has put out reports highlighting the danger that a warming world will post to America's security. Climate change is a "threat multiplier," these experts say, because a warmer planet will have more refugees, more instability and more conflict. And the other side of their message is the price of oil addiction. With hostile countries like Iran buoyed by oil revenue, our refusal to move away from cheap crude has us, in the words of former CIA director James Woolsey, "funding both sides of the war on terror." Adds Jonathan Murray, the campaign director for Operation Free and a Marine veteran: "The real cost of gas is not what people pay at the gas station."

After Oil Spills, Hidden Damage Can Last for Years

On the rocky beaches of Alaska, scientists plunged shovels and picks into the ground and dug 6,775 holes, repeatedly striking oil — still pungent and dangerous a dozen years after the Exxon Valdez infamously spilled its cargo.

More than an ocean away, on the Breton coast of France, scientists surveying the damage after another huge oil spill found that disturbances in the food chain persisted for more than a decade.

Hague Writes to Clinton Denying BP Involvement in Lockerbie Bomber Release

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague has written to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying there’s no evidence BP Plc was involved in last year’s decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi.

“There is no evidence that corroborates in any way the allegations of BP involvement in the Scottish Executive’s decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009,” Hague wrote yesterday in a letter released by the U.K. Foreign Office. “Nor any suggestion that the Scottish Executive decided to release Megrahi in order to facilitate oil deals for BP.”

Electric car prep begins

SALISBURY -- Hey drivers, get ready to rev your engines to a gentle whisper. Electric cars from Chevrolet and Nissan are expected to arrive in select U.S. markets later this year.

Maryland has invested $1 million of stimulus money in public charging and truck electrification stations, which will be clustered around Baltimore and the I-95 corridor. To help spur sales, the state will give a $2,000 excise tax credit to buyers of the battery-powered vehicles through 2013. That comes on top of a federal tax break of up to $7,500 for some electric vehicles.

U.S. House Committee Said to Consider Reducing Ethanol Subsidy by 20%

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee has proposed reducing the tax credit that helps support the ethanol industry by 20 percent to cut spending, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Refiners and blenders would receive 36 cents for every gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline from the 45 cents they currently pocket, said the people, who declined to be identified because the proposal hasn’t been made public. The tax credit expires this year and the committee is proposing to extend it an additional year.

U.S. Military Vaults into Clean Energy Future Despite Fossil Fuel Lobby

There they go again: right when the U.S. military completes yet another project to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel industry plays Debbie Downer. This week’s matchup involved our own U.S. Air Force, which has just announced its latest solar power installation with cheery pride, versus an industry group called “CO2 is Green,” which has just launched a new campaign proclaiming that more C02 is good because “it supports all plant life.” Hey, whose corner should we be in?

China Wind Power Priorities Offers Europe Opportunities, Oxford Study Says

China’s changing priorities for wind power are creating opportunities for European companies as the world’s biggest polluter seeks to boost wind-park efficiency, a study by researchers at Oxford University said.

One Bride for 2 Brothers: A Custom Fades in India

People here survived off small farms hewed from the mountainsides at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and dividing property among several sons would leave each with too little land to feed a family.

...The practice also acted as a form of birth control. Five brothers with a wife each could easily produce dozens of children. But polyandrous families seldom had more than six or seven children.

To the Mat on Global Warming

“The Climate War” focuses mainly on the economic and political aspects of the global-warming issue. That is in keeping with Mr. Pooley’s areas of journalistic expertise. He is the deputy editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, a former managing editor of Fortune and a former national editor, chief political correspondent and White House correspondent for Time.

Mr. Pooley calls his account “an epic without an ending,” saying that the American political system gives a “natural advantage to the opponents of climate action” and that Congress has “become so distorted by special-interest dollars and partisan bile” that it seems “to block progress of any kind, no matter how urgent.”

10 ways vegetarianism can help save the planet

The average British carnivore eats more than 11,000 animals in their lifetime, each requiring vast amounts of land, fuel and water to reach the plate. It's time to think of waste as well as taste.

Ranchers and Drug Barons Threaten Rain Forest

EL MIRADOR, Guatemala — Great sweeps of Guatemalan rain forest, once the cradle of one of the world’s great civilizations, are being razed to clear land for cattle-ranching drug barons.

Other parts of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Central America’s largest protected area, have been burned down by small cities of squatters.

Looters and poachers, kept at bay when guerrilla armies roamed the region during the country’s 36-year civil war, ply their trades freely.

Singapore could be in “deep” trouble by the end of this century, warn experts

The experts at Delft Hydraulics have warned that, if the ice caps melt significantly as a result of fossil-fuel linked Global Warming, waters could rise up to 6 metres by the end of this century, which would spell trouble for Singapore and many other coastal cities.

How Global Climate Change May Affect Violence

(NNPA) - If global warming is a scientific fact, then we'd better be prepared for the earth to become a more violent place. That according to a recent Iowa State University study that shows as the earth's average temperature rises, so too does violent tendencies in humans.

Waste Britain: UK's emissions could be cut at flick of a switch

Simple measures such as turning electrical appliances off at the mains and installing energy-efficient lightbulbs could slash the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 megatonnes a year, or up to one third, according to new research which says that cutting electricity consumption is up to 60 per cent more effective than previously thought. Such basic lifestyle changes would be the equivalent of removing about 10 large gas-fired power stations from operation.

Scaled-Back Carbon Emission Plan's Prospects Slim, Senator Harkin Says

Scaling back legislation to cap carbon dioxide from power plants rather than most of the U.S. economy might not win enough votes for a new greenhouse gas law to pass the Senate this year, two senators said.

“I don’t think that’s going to fly,” Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, said yesterday of the plan for cutting power- plant carbon dioxide that may be included in an energy bill to be debated later this month.