Big Oil’s Saudi Aramco Builds LEED Certified Homes in Riyadh
The irony here is clear: the first international LEED certified housing complex is built by an oil research facility in Saudi Arabia.
Isis Nile Cruise Ship Spills Diesel Into Egypt’s River, Contaminating Lake
Egypt is not a country that is fond of reporting oil spills – whether they occur on the Red Sea, in the Suez Canal or the Nile. But it has managed to start clean up a worrying diesel spill into the Nile River, a spill which has leaked onto the shores of Lake Nasser, China.org is reporting. [...]
Futek’s Solar Cell Plants Shrink Egypt’s Fossil Fuel Addiction
Futek is about to break ground on a new solar cell manufacturing plant in Egypt, which is expected to cost roughly USD 3 million to construct. This is the company’s third such plant in the solar-rich north African country, which combined with the others costs a total of USD 7.35 million to run. President of [...]
Ethical Oil, Gas and Mining? EITI is the LEED of Fossil Fuels
Roughly half of the world’s population lives in resource-rich countries, and yet the same number survives on less than $2.50 per day. How can this be? Partly, the answer lies with irresponsible resource extraction. Giant corporations move in to communities, suck up their oil, gas, or minerals, make shifty deals with corrupt governments, and leave [...]
Golan Heights Slated for Oil and Gas Drilling…and Environmental Damage?
With everything else, this Hamat gader croc may have to put up with oil well drilling as well The Golan Heights, that disputed piece of real estate that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 is returning to world attention due to the possibility that there are oil and natural gas reserves in its southern sector. [...]
Israel to Drill for Oil in Underwater Nature Reserve Illuminates Schizophrenic Government Policies
An absurd situation where one ministry approves the marine reserve and and another gives a license for oil drilling. Nothing new for Israel. If Greenpeace has won the battle against Zara and its use of toxic chemicals, this new potential environmental threat should have the Greenpeace Mediterranean headquarters on full alert: the Israeli government eager [...]
Oil-Rich UAE Leads Emissions Accountability
Abu Dhabi has the world’s 5th highest proven oil reserve and the 6th highest reserve of natural gas. This is a hydrocarbon-based economy that – at first glance – should have no incentive to reduce their carbon footprint. And yet the United Arab Emirates as a whole seems to be taking climate change a lot [...]
Iran Gags on Pollution and Sanctions
Iran is gagging – on sanctions and deadly pollution. Finally, after months of denial, the country’s oil minister Rostam Qasemi acknowledged that petroleum sales are down by 40 percent after western sanctions that prohibit certain international transactions have stunted trade. In February, all energy, shipping and shipbuilding enterprises will be blacklisted as well, the New [...]
Catching CO2 the Saudi Way?
Saudi Arabia has a lofty goal of storing CO2 by increasing oil recovery and reducing waste. Carbon capture utilization has become one of the most innovative means of recycling and reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the globe, but has largely remained an untouched endeavor in the Middle East. Until now. Saudi Arabia’s Aramco research and [...]
GlassPoint Uses Solar Mirrors to Loosen Dirty Oil in Oman
California-based GlassPoint Solar has installed an unconventional concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Oman. Comprised of rows of six meter tall steel mirrors encased in glass boxes that look and in some ways act like greenhouses, this 7MW pilot project uses clean technology to extract dirty fossil fuels. Commissioned by Petroleum Development Oman, GlassPoint has [...]
Walking the Middle Ground as Oil Feeds Our Energy Needs
I had a great meeting yesterday with culture advisors to an American Embassy yesterday in a Middle East location. I won’t say where as the meeting was off the record, but the two were very much following environmental issues in the Middle East. One asked me as the editor of Green Prophet how us “environmentalists” [...]
USA Fracking Will Top Saudi Oil Production in Five Years
The United States is poised to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 thanks to increased output of new exploration technologies such as fracking. But what does this mean for politics? The World Energy Outlook 2012 released by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that America will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as [...]
Noble Energy May be Pushing its Luck by Drilling for Deep Oil in the Med
Satellite view of Deepwater Horizen oil spill slick, April 30, 2010: Photo by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Noble Energy, the Houston based energy company, has been working with both Israel and Cyprus to find commercial quantities of natural gas under the eastern Mediterranean seabed . Noble Energy’s Mediterranean undersea energy exploration has [...]
Can Flow Industries Make Oil Fracking Greener?
Can green and fracking ever be used in the same sentence? Hydraulic fracturing – fracking — is one way to extract valuable shale oil and gases from deep underground by injecting a highly pressurized fluid into rock to pull out the fossil fuel. Those in favor of fracking say that it will help America become [...]
Holy Mecca Will Be Saudi’s First Solar City
Saudi Arabia’s government has confirmed that it will develop and build a $640 million solar power plant in the holy city of Mecca. It continues the country’s recent talks of bolstering its clean energy sector and with the holy pilgrimage of Hajj beginning, the government believes this is the best time to announce the massive [...]
Abu Dhabi Behind Matt Damon Anti-Fracking Film
Perhaps floored that a subsidiary of the state-owned Abu Dhabi Media, Image Nation, could be behind such a high-quality production as Promised Land, a new anti-fracking film written by and starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski, western bloggers are drawing conspiratorial connections between the production company and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The theory [...]
Kurdish Self-Rule Spreading in War-Torn Syria
Could a united Kurdistan mean a victory for the peoples’ natural resources: energy, and mighty rivers? Against the backdrop of the civil war raging in Syria, Syrian Kurds are moving towards self-rule. The Syrian government has relinquished many Kurdish communities to local control. Kurdish flags fly over former government buildings in northeastern Syria. Many new [...]
Egypt’s Power Cuts Turn Blackouts Into Green Business
Meet Egypt’s new Solar Energy Association hoping to turn a country’s power crisis into eco-innovation. It’s dark at an upscale Cairo café. It’s not closed and service continues despite the only light coming from windows along two walls. The cause was an electricity outage. While it only lasted around 15 minutes, it was one of [...]
Iran Blows Past Sanctions with Wind Energy
Determined to stay its unpopular nuclear course, Iran is now turning to wind power and other renewable energy sources to blow past sanctions. Last year Karin reported that the current regime plans to produce 5,000 MW of solar energy by 2015, and in May this year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put aside an additional $620 million [...]
Post-Oil Stagnation in Kuwait at the Venice Biennale
Kuwait is making its debut at the 13th Venice Biennale this year, and they’re doing so with some serious style. The pavilion features a cavernous industrial space interrupted with dangling speakers, orange cushions and abandoned master plans, and it was commissioned by the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCAA). Unlike many of the [...]
Turkey Starts Buying Kurdish Gas Over Baghdad’s Objections
Defying the Iraqi central government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has begun selling gas directly to Turkey. Crude oil sales will also begin soon. Five tankers crossed the border from the KRG into Turkey in July, marking the first exchange of oil or gas between the two governments. The trade was just a harbinger of [...]
Turkey’s Economic Growth Hampered By Oil Addiction, Analysts Say
Rising international petroleum prices are bad news for Turkey, which imports 90 percent of the oil it consumes. Turkey’s dependence on imported oil has already been key in creating its $86.6 billion current account deficit, and will continue to hold the country back from reaching its full growth potential, according to analysts from three major [...]
Qatar Eco-Summit Spotlights Environmental Safety
8th annual Health, Safety and Environment Forum in Energy happens in Doha from October 8 -10 Accidents associated with oil and gas operations endanger human life, damage adjacent communities and threaten the environment. The shockwaves of these accidents affect the business involved and its workers, and extend far beyond. Millions of dollars are spent annually [...]
Hot and Hungry Saudis Protest Ramadan Power Outages
A silly argument breaks out in the street? Ramadan. A customs control officer falls asleep while processing passports at the airport? Ramadan. A random stranger passes out bottles of juice during Iftar? All of these events are explained by one word in the Middle East and North Africa: Ramadan – the holy month during which Muslims [...]
Iran Considers Censoring Films Depicting Chicken Meals
US sanctions are putting such a strain on Iran’s poor that the government wants to censor films depicting hearty chicken meals, The Telegraph reports. Worried that the image of their favorite dish (like this mouth-watering Maklubah) will be so incendiary that people who can’t afford to buy it will be inclined to attack the rich, Mr [...]
Turks Trade Gold for Iran’s Energy Allegiance
To continue feeding its addiction to Iranian oil, Turkey exported eight times as much gold to Iran in the first five months of 2012 versus 2011. In March, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran in response to its uranium enrichment program. Later that month, Iran was cut off from [...]
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Woes Solved by Red Sea Drilling?
Gas is 15 cents a liter (60 cents a gallon) in Saudi Arabia: the government is fighting to keep both high standard of living and long-term energy security Saudi Arabia has been aggressively looking for anything and everything that can provide energy. Whether it is to maintain its status as the largest exporter of crude [...]
Visit Florida to Understand the Importance of Impact and Restoration
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf on the Florida coast shocked the world. We watched as the BP-owned rig leaked 4.9 million barrels of oil into Florida’s fragile ecosystem. Two years later, BP will be paying, with fines expected to go from $5 billion to $21 billion, most of which would be [...]
US Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Pressures Turkey’s Energy Supply
Libya is one of the countries with which Turkey signed a rapid oil supply deal after the United States threatened to sanction countries that purchased oil from Iran. In March, U.S. President Barack Obama approved sanctions on buyers of Iranian crude oil, effective starting in July. The announcement threw many of Iran’s international customers into [...]
Why Did the Saudis Just Go Big in Solar? Oil Prices.
Saudi Arabia will save an estimated 690,000 barrels of oil a day by investing in renewables. Wonder just why Saudi Arabia finally got serious about solar with a $109 billion plan to solar-power a third of the Kingdom? I did. After all, for a long time, while its greener neighbors have been adding thousands of [...]
Can Qatar Balance its Oil Interests and Host a Successful Climate Summit?
I speak to Qatar-based environmental researcher Mari Luomi about the balancing act Qatar has to perform at the upcoming climate summit You could say that Mari Luomi’s environmental education began at a very early stage. Wandering through the forests and lakes of Finland when young, she explains that she learnt very quickly that human societies [...]
Mediterranean Agency Could Avert Offshore Marine Disasters
As Israeli rigs start drilling for natural gas, a new disaster prevention agency is proposed to avert another BP-Florida Gulf disaster. Environmentalists have proposed a new government body that might head off ecological catastrophes on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The new agency could set policy more efficiently by streamlining the powers currently shared by several different [...]
Israel’s Petroleum Council Adds Environment Reps
Meged oil field, in Israel. Last week two environmental representatives were added to Israel’s Petroleum Council, according to the Jerusalem Post. The council has been restructured to include a total of 13 members, including seven members of the public. As Israel’s ongoing court dispute between government officials and national gas distributors proves, the industry has [...]
MENA Is Changing Drastically & NASA Has The Pictures To Prove It
From urbanisation in Morocco to lake shrinkage in Iran, these shocking NASA photos prove how this region is in dramatic ecological flux. Unless you have been living in a consumer-induced coma, it will not have escaped your attention that the world is under serious environmental stress. And a large chunk of that stress has been human-induced. [...]
Turkey Begins Controversial Drilling In Cyprus
Turkey has started exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the town of Iskele in northern Cyprus (red arrow), angering the government of the Greek-controlled southern region. The Turkish Petroleum Corporation began onshore drilling operations on April 26 at a 3,000-meter-deep well, named “Türkyurdu-1″ (“Turkish Homeland”), which Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız called a “force for [...]
Barriers to Solid Waste Recycling in Saudi Arabia
Excellent at recycling oil, what are the barriers to Saudi Arabia in recycling other valuables? There are significant barriers that hinder the wide application of reverse logistics in some industries of Saudi Arabia. Let me first present the definition of the concept. Iran’s S. Dowlatshahi defined reverse logistics as the process by which a manufacturing [...]
Egypt Slashes Longstanding Gas Deal With Israel
Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company announced on Sunday that they have cancelled their agreement to sell natural gas to Israel following at least one dozen attacks on the pipeline linking the two countries. Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said the move was of “great concern,” but Egypt insists that the decision was motivated purely by commercial [...]
How can the Arab World Benefit from Climate Change Negotiations in Qatar?
The last international climate change negotiation (COP17) took place in Durban in 2011 and the outcomes were pretty disappointing given the urgency of the matter in hand. Unsatisfactory outcomes aside, climate change negotiations have been providing momentous opportunities for NGOs, individuals and the private sector to engage and exchange ideas on solutions to climate change mitigation. [...]
Absurd 24 Carat Gold-Plated iPads to Sell for $5,500
Gold and Co. London encases electronics in 24 carat gold-plating; their best market? The Gulf, naturally. It’s impossible and rude to speak for the dead, but we find it hard to believe that Steve Jobs would have wanted anything he designed covered in gold. But this is the Gulf and we’ve seen stranger things, including [...]
Saudi Arabia Dumps Oil in Time for US Election Season
A fleet of oil tankers is heading from Saudi Arabia to the US in order to drive down “unjustified” oil prices of $127 per barrel. Saudi Arabia’s current capacity of 9.9 million barrels per day already exceeds self-imposed OPEC quotas. Saudi Petroleum minister Ali Naimi said production could go up another 25% to 12.5 million [...]