Free Republic

Before you jump to the wrong conclusion based on the title, don’t worry. The United States is nowhere near running out of natural gas that is available to be extracted from the ground and put into production. The oil and gas industry has identified more untapped natural gas resources on U.S. soil and off of our coasts than we could possibly use for the next century. But we don’t pipe natural gas from the wells straight to your homes and businesses. The gas is stored in huge underground tanks until it’s ready to be transported to its final distribution locations....

Junk your SUV and buy an electric scooter. Recent claims by various OPEC leaders that the world has plenty of oil left are bunk, alleges Sadad Al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. Oil-producing countries are inflating the size of their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels by padding supposedly proven reserves with “probable” reserves and tar and oil sands, according to Husseini. Such hypothetical reserves are “not delineated, not accessible and not available for production,” Husseini said at a recent energy conference in London. Oil production has now reached its...

Bottom trawling destroys deep sea lifeNew York: A long-awaited report by the United Nations shows the need for an international moratorium on bottom-trawling and other destructive fishing practices that damage deep sea life, Conservation International (CI) said. The U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) reviewed measures to protect the vulnerable deep oceans of the high seas -- the 64 percent of ocean that lies beyond the national jurisdictions of any individual nation. Its review, ordered by the U.N. General Assembly in 2004, was based on reports from member states on steps taken to stop destructive...

Portugal facing EU action for lax disposal of ozone-depleting pollutantThe European Commission has launched legal action against Portugal for failing to enforce laws regulating the disposal of old refrigerators and air conditioning units containing ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), enviromentalists said Friday. Quercus, a leading Portuguese environmental group, said it received a letter from the EU Environment Commission last month informing the group that Brussels was opening a probe into complaints that Lisbon has not provided sufficient CFC recycling facilities. The group complained to Brussels last year that only 0.5 percent of roughly 500,000 old CFC-containing equipments were disposed of properly in...

Ozone Hole Peak Approaches, But Falls Short Of Record Greenbelt - Sep 26, 2003 This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the second largest ever observed, according to scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Naval Research Laboratory. The Antarctic ozone hole is defined as thinning of the ozone layer over the continent to levels significantly below pre-1979 levels. Ozone blocks harmful ultraviolet "B" rays. Loss of stratospheric ozone has been linked to skin cancer in humans and other adverse biological effects on plants and animals. The size of this year's hole reached 10.9 million square...

Study reveals plunge in big fish numbersBy Lidia WasowiczUPI Senior Science WriterFrom the Science & Technology DeskPublished 5/14/2003 1:05 PMView printer-friendly version A global survey spanning nearly half a century reveals a 90 percent plunge in the population of large ocean fish, from tuna to cod, since commercial fishing vessels took to the high seas, Canadian researchers reported Wednesday.With their numbers decreasing by as much as 80 percent in 15 years, the depleted communities could crash delicately balanced ecosystems, with unknown worldwide consequences, the surveyors of pelagic creatures warned."More than 90 percent of the fish we like to eat are...

EU Fishing Subsidies Slammed in View of Cod Crisis BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 28, 2002 (ENS) - European Union governments have been accused of offering a patchwork of environmentally damaging fishing subsidies, as fisheries ministers gather in Brussels to discuss stocks in crisis and system reforms. Support for new or modernized fishing vessels still outstrips that for reducing fishing effort, and subsidies vary enormously between countries, the conservation organization WWF warned Tuesday. (CAPTION) Four fishermen work to pull in a medium sized tuna. Favignana, Sicily, Italy 1999 (Photo by Danilo Cedrone courtesy FAO) The environmental group timed its intervention to...