Mining The Earth & Fracking The World: Building Snowmen On Doomsday

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Every week, Kate Lanier assembles the most important global energy and climate news. This week includes:

Davos: $100 billion in Europe could have been better spent on renewable power plants if there were “better cross-border coordination and bigger power cables between countries.” Update: Some of our oligarchs are worried.

Peru: Recently we celebrated Maxima Acuna de Chaupe’s major legal victory against the mining company. Of course, this cannot go unpunished, so a local “police and [Yanacocha Mine Co.] security contingent”—with no warrants—have prevented her and her husband from “attending to their farm” and actually threatened them when they protested.

Nebraska: TransCanada has filed eminent domain petitions against those landowners fighting to keep the pipeline off their properties (h/t wendydavis). It’s “just another step in the process” for them. Update: Hillary Clinton, in Winnipeg, “‘You won’t get me to talk about Keystone.’”

Mining The Earth & Fracking The World: A Long Walk For The Climate

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Every week, Kate Lanier assembles the most important global energy and climate news. This week includes:

New Mexicio: Diné youth are so concerned about corporate exploitation of underground resources, including oil and uranium, that they have embarked on a prayer walk of 200 miles. This first walk honors “The Long Walk of the Diné People to Ft. Sumner, New Mexico.” Other walks will follow this year.

Colombia: The underground Ocensa pipeline, carrying 650,000 barrels of crude/day between the huge Cusiana-Cupiagua oilfield to the Caribbean coast, built only about 15 years ago, has eroded campesinos’ farmland and led to severe loss of income. Campesinos sued BP in the UK seven years ago. The court case is nearing conclusion.

India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will invest $100 billion in solar power and put solar plants “atop canals: efficient and cheap land use, and reduce water evaporation from the channels underneath.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is quite impressed.

Mining The Earth & Fracking The World: Hallelujah, Save The Planet!

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Kate Lanier offers selections from global mining, fracking and energy-related news including:

Chile: “Chile is now emerging as the southern hemisphere’s renewable energy giant, particularly in the mining sector.” They’re “building independent solar, solar thermal, wind and geothermal power plants” which are producing power at prices “competitive with or lower” than conventional producers. Chile’s latest renewable power costs are $80/megawatt hour—compared to $95 for coal.

Russia: Rosneft tried to buy “a Morgan Stanley oil-trading firm,” but the deal went poof! thanks to US authorities whose sanctions “have hurt Rosneft’s ability to finance the operations.” Those sanctions also mean ExxonMobil and other Rosneft partners won’t be developing offshore oil in the Arctic.

Texas: Gas flaring at the Eagle Ford Shale “burned off more than 20 billion cubic feet of natural gas,” producing as many tons of pollution in seven months as were produced in all of 2012. Not all the flaring was state permitted, either. The TX Railroad Commission (I know, I know, but they’re in charge of these things) has sent lots and lots of letters to the companies involved, reminding them they shouldn’t flare without permits, but with the price of oil so low, what’s a company to do?

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