Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank and the European Investment Bank are to lend US$183 and Euro 55 million respectively to Tanzania, where the money will establish Songas, a privately owned and managed natural gas and power utility. The company will develop Tanzania’s natural gas field on Songo Songo Island and construct a 230 km pipeline to bring the gas to a power plant, which will be refurbished and converted to gas production.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
TALISMAN Energy Inc. are in talks with Asian companies and Saudi princes interested in buying the firm’s controversial Sudanese oil assets, reports the London Financial Times.

It says Jim Buckee, the companies’ CEO, claimed “issues would be resolved by Christmas,” and that projects in Malaysia and Trinidad would replace Sudanese oil production, which contributes 11 per cent, of Talisman’s worldwide output.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
TALISMAN Energy Inc. has announced that it has made a substantial oil discovery in Trinidad, which could give the Canadian oil giant another profitable operations area. The company said that a 14-foot section of a 933-foot hydrocarbon column had produced 3,000 barrels-a-day in testing.…

BY RICHARD HURST
SOUTH African synthetic fuels company SASOL has reported that it will use natural gas from Mozambique to supply small power stations. The Rand 12 billion pipeline project will bring gas from the Temane and Pende fields to Secunda as early as 2004.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INCREASING political pressure is being applied on eastern European governments to raise fuel prices, so as to improve their environmental performance and promote investment in energy efficient industries.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe recently addressed the issue, with its Committee on Sustainable Energy and the Committee on Environmental Policy agreeing to produce guidelines on price reform.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), has announced a US$60 million programme to introduce hydrogen fuel-cell powered buses to the public transit systems of developing country cities. Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City, New Delhi, Sao Paulo and Shanghai will share 46 of these low emission buses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNOPS, the United Nations’ major provider of project management services, has signed a partnership agreement with YUKOS, the second largest oil company in Russia in terms of oil and gas production and reserves. The agreement aims at establishing the terms for future cooperation between YUKOS and other UN organisations in Russia and neighbouring countries.…

BY MONCA DOBIE
CONCERNS raised by some newspaper pundits over the recent Americanisation of Canada’s western oil fields are unfounded, according to both industry analysts and the federal government in Ottawa.

Columnists have raised their eyebrows about a series of deals in the past 10 months which has seen a clutch of key Alberta oil companies being taken over by large US rivals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FOOD processing industry could help make the EU economy more sustainable by increasingly spreading its waste on farmland, a European Commission report has claimed. It highlights the “elements beneficial to plant growth…rapidly available to plants,” with “very few trace organic compounds or heavy metals.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHOCOLATE sales have been buoyed in north America following the terror attacks in the United States and the deepening recession says John Rowsome, President of the Confectionery Manufacturers of Canada. Speaking to the Toronto Globe and Mail he said: “Candy sales are exceedingly buoyant.…