NATO advisers have warned that Russia may be seeking to create a gas cartel stretching from Algeria to central Asia to use as a political weapon in dealings with Europe, the Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday quoting its sources in the military bloc.
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November 15, 2006A hard-hitting report on climate change published by the British government on Monday has no basis in science or economics, OPEC’s Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency reported.
The report written by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that failure to tackle climate change could push world temperatures up by 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) over the next century, causing severe floods and harsh droughts and uprooting many as 200 million people.
The study recommended taking action now to offset the far greater cost of dealing with climate change later.
But Barkindo told an energy conference in Moscow that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) —- which holds around two thirds of the world’s oil reserves —- opposed such research efforts. “We find some of the so-called initiatives of the rich industrialized countries who are supposed to take the lead in combating climate change rather alarming,†he said.
“One recent example is the review on climate change that was issued yesterday by the UK government in London.â€
Stern’s report was welcomed by environmental activists as well as by the British government and the European Commission. The White House Council on Environmental Quality said it was a contribution to an abundance of economic analysis on climate change.
Barkindo said it was misguided but he did not elaborate on possible solutions to the problem.
“The mitigation and adaptation to climate change can only be accomplished on the principles of common responsibility and respected capabilities and not by scenarios that have no foundations in either science or economics as we had yesterday from London,†he said.
OPEC is made up of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Australia, which alongside the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb Greenhouse gas emissions, also said on Tuesday it did not accept the British report.
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October 31, 2006Statistics recently published by the oil cartel OPEC show that Russia is currently extracting more oil than Saudi Arabia, making it the biggest producer of “black gold†in the world, the British Financial Times reported on Wednesday, Aug. 23.
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August 23, 2006
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