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” […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]