Tar sands fever! It's about water, sand, and oil--but this is no day at the beach.
It's well known that the United States consumes more oil per capita than any other country in the world, absorbing two-thirds of global oil production. This heavy dependence has often, and aptly, been described as an addiction; even U.S. President George W. Bush trotted out the metaphor in his...

RP needs P162 B to develop local coal resources up to 2014.
Byline: James A. Loyola The Philippines needs about P162.3-billion worth of investments for indigenous coal exploration and development until 2014. Data from the Department of Energy shows, P45.6 billion in investments will be needed to develop potential areas in Luzon, P77.4 billion for Visayas and...

Local coal production seen picking up with hiked demand.
Byline: Myrna M. Velasco While still marginalized compared to the volume of imports, local coal production is expected to pick up in the short-term with various coal-fired power projects about to be taken off from the drawing board to satiate the country's electricity demand. The...

RP needs P162 B to develop local coal resources up to 2014.
Byline: JAMES A. LOYOLA The Philippines needs about P162.3-billion worth of investments for indigenous coal exploration and development until 2014. Data from the Department of Energy shows, P45.6 billion in investments will be needed to develop potential areas in Luzon, P77.4 billion for Visayas and...

Weighing in on WOPR.
Byline: The Register-Guard Anyone needing a last-minute resolution to fill out their New Year's list should add letting the Bureau of Land Management know where they stand on the federal agency's proposal to nearly triple logging on 2.2 million acres in Western Oregon. The BLM's...

SUNCOR ENERGY BOARD APPROVES FUNDING FOR OIL SANDS GROWTH.
Suncor Energy Inc., Calgary, has announced that its board of directors has approved funding for the next phase in the company's oil sands growth strategy and its 2005 capital spending plan. Suncor's board gave final approval to the expenditures required to construct a $2.1 billion upgrader expansion,...

New Boundaries of Influence in Highland Papua: 'Culture', Mining and Ritual Conversions.
ABSTRACT This article considers the new boundaries of influence among Fuyuge speakers in the Udabe Valley (Central Province, Papua New Guinea [PNG]). These new boundaries have arisen through the conjunction of epochal shifts implicating the PNG State, and local forms of ritual. On the one hand the...

Paving the way for responsible mining.
MINERALS have become more difficult to extract and profound changes are taking place in the environment. In earlier days, miners banded together in informal companies to dam rivers, reroute the water, and expose the gold and other minerals on the river beds. Today, mining corporations have developed extraction techniques...

Land rights--the next battleground.
IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1961, on the last day of sitting of the twenty-third federal parliament, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Voting Rights for Aborigines, George Pearce, tabled his Committee's Report in the House of Representatives. It recommended unanimously that all Australian Aborigines should have the right to...

Scientists reject owl plan.
Byline: The Register-Guard The Bush administration's efforts to reduce protections for the Northern spotted owl in order to bring back widespread clear-cut logging in Western Oregon's old growth forests have been dealt a well deserved reversal. The administration proposes lifting restrictions on logging in 23...