Canada is home to the world’s third largest oil reserves. But extracting the black gold is difficult, and threatens to destroy both the surrounding environment and the homeland of native tribes. With protests growing against a planned US pipeline, the oil sands controversy threatens to spread south. Celina Harpe holds up the map like an indictment. […]
Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada and member of the Cree First Nation, on oil sands operations in northern Alberta, threats to her homeland, and the planned Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Houston, Texas. Q: US-president Barack Obama has to decide before the end of the year if TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline can […]
For as long as he can remember Floyd Lasseigne has been a fisherman on Grand Isle, off the coast of Louisiana. Now he has to stand by and watch as the BP oil spill destroys his life. The oysters lie in the water like silent harbingers of the disaster. A shiny film of oil washes […]
SPIEGEL-Online International: BP has only one arrow left in its quiver, a method known as ‘bottom kill.’ The idea is for relief wells to stop the gushing oil from below, but the technical challenges are formidable. Past experiences show that the oil may continue flowing into late autumn. For the engineers, it was a blessing […]
The Gulf of Mexico spill is vastly larger than the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, but where is all the oil? While efforts to protect coastlines have been making the headlines, the real ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is unfolding deep beneath the water’s surface. Samantha Joye was sure she was right. Somewhere […]
The oil catastrophe afflicting the Gulf of Mexico underscores just how dangerous offshore oil exploration can be. Oil companies are seeking to extract the planet’s last remaining barrels by drilling from ever-deeper sites on the ocean floor that wouldn’t even have been considered not too many years ago. The oil now coating the Gulf of […]
The oil spill from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico could turn into the biggest environmental catastrophe in US history. It could take months to stop the oil flow, and the damage to the local economy and wildlife could be huge. The accident is likely to hamper US President Barack Obama’s […]