Siberia has traditionally conjured up images of fearsome cold and death, first as a place of exile under the Russian Tsars and later under the murderous regime of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. A great appeal of eastern Siberia for political exile was its extreme remoteness. Originally only reachable by ship, eastern Siberia’s isolation was only somewhat alleviated by the opening of the single-track Trans-Siberian railroad in 1916. Russia’s Pacific coast city Vladivostok is closer to Tokyo and Beijing than Moscow. Russia’s…
The Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed measures that it said would cut emissions for new power plants. Critics are lining up to say this marks the end of coal-fired power generation in the United States and in some ways they may be right. Despite the fervor over things like the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the fracking of natural gas, coal still dominates the energy sector and has been since at least the 1960s. While critics of the EPA’s proposals may have a point, is that necessarily a bad thing? The Supreme Court in 2007…
Gasoline prices remain high, and Reuters recently noted that there are enough countries with civil unrest, technical problems and bad weather that there are around a million barrels a day of possible supply that are not getting to the market. Yet with Saudi Arabia continuing to reassure that it is willing to pump more oil, if needed, there appears to be, superficially, little cause for supply concerns this year. By the same token, in the longer term, concerns over supply also seem to be increasingly discounted. For example Citigroup has just released…
It may be small by global standards, but Britain’s oil and gas industry has far greater significance than its size suggests. Apart from providing a global oil price benchmark — Brent Crude — derived from a blend of sweet North Sea crude types, exploration techniques and production technologies pioneered in the North Sea are used around the world to extract oil from hostile environments. Whatever is done in offshore oil and gas fields around the world, the chances are it was probably done first in the North Sea. The oil and gas…
Turkey has adopted a new strategy in its bid to solve its Kurdish “issue.” Ankara’s outreach initiative has enormous energy implications, as Turkey currently imports 90 percent of its energy supplies and many pipelines run through Turkey’s eastern Kurdish regions, a tempting target which Kurdish militants have attacked in the past. Under the new plan of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his government will not attempt negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the outlawed separatist Marxist Kurdistan…
The UK has announced that its greenhouse gas emissions fell by seven percent in comparison to 2010. This was due to a higher average temperature, reducing demand of energy to heat houses, and an increase in the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources. Emissions of the six greenhouse gases laid out by the Kyoto Protocol were down to 549 million tonnes from 590 million tonnes in 2010. Carbon dioxide, which makes up nearly 84 percent of UK emissions, was down by eight percent. Renewable energy now accounts for 9.5 percent of the UK’s…
Germany has set the bold emissions target of reducing its greenhouse gas levels by 40% by 2020, and then 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. Other countries have set similarly ambitious targets but Germany is the largest economy to aim to produce so much of their energy from renewable sources. They have led the world in solar installations, and now are concentrating on wind power as well. Germany will be a test case to show whether industrialised nations can still compete whilst relying on renewable energy. Keeping energy costs low whilst moving…
Slumping … it has been a decade of slow population growth in Sydney.
POPULATION growth in NSW has slumped to a five-year low, robbing the economy of momentum. The population rose by 1.1 per cent to 7.3 million last financial year but that rate of increase was below the national average and well down on the previous year.
Neighbourhoods along the Parramatta River in inner- and central-western Sydney had the fastest growing populations. But Melbourne continued to close the population gap on Sydney, thanks to the state’s sluggish growth overall.
Sydney’s population rose by almost 60,000 in the year to June, more than 15,000 less than 2009-10. Despite its smaller population, Melbourne added 7100 more people than Sydney in 2010-11. Melbourne’s population is now within 500,000 of Sydney’s and possible changes to the way the Bureau of Statistics calculates regional populations could close the gap even further. But the rate of population growth in Australia’s two biggest cities lagged well behind Perth, which grew at nearly twice Sydney’s rate.
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High property prices, restrictive planning laws and lethargic economic growth have been blamed for a decade of relatively slow population growth in Sydney. A significant slowdown in the rate of overseas migration since 2008 is also a factor.
CommSec’s chief economist, Craig James, said population growth was a key driver of growth. ”Population is power,” he said. ”This is something that the NSW government is going to have to have a look at. If you don’t have people coming into the state you are not going to get the revenue growth you need.”
The NSW Treasurer, Mike Baird, blamed years of feeble population growth on Labor’s economic mismanagement. ”The government sees the importance of population growth for the state economy, which is part of the reason for the initiative on skilled migrants which we have announced,” he said.
Mr Baird said there had been encouraging growth momentum recently regardless of the sluggish population growth.
Canada Bay on the Parramatta River was the fastest-growing council area in NSW, followed by Camden, Parramatta and Auburn.
An economist at the Housing Industry Association, Harley Dale, attributed Canada Bay’s growth to the high number of medium-density flats built in recent years, coupled with its fairly easy access to the city, which had made it attractive to property buyers.
Many of the housing developments in Canada Bay have been built on old industrial sites and the bureau said this type of “infill development” was becoming more common in big cities. But Canada Bay ranked only the 23rd fastest growing council area in Australia. The top rate – 7.8 per cent – was recorded in Wyndham, an outer Melbourne suburb. Several neighbourhoods in Perth and mineral-rich regions of Western Australia also had rapid population growth.
Six of the 10 most densely populated neighbourhoods were in Sydney. The highest density – 8900 people per square kilometre – was in the inner-city suburbs of Surry Hills, Darlinghurst and Potts Point. The statistical division taking in Bondi and Bronte also had population densities among the highest in the country.
The bureau said Sydney makes up 63 per cent of the NSW population. The centre of population in the Sydney statistical district was Ermington.
Outside Sydney, parts of the Hunter and Orange experienced the fastest growth rates.
Breaking News Alert The New York Times Friday, March 30, 2012 — 2:22 PM EDT —–
Obama Clearing Way to Tighten Sanctions Targeting Iranian Oil
President Obama has determined there is enough oil in world markets to allow countries to rely less on imports from Iran, a step that could ramp up western sanctions to deter Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, an administration official said Friday. Mr. Obama is required by law to decide by March 30, and every six months after, whether the price and supply of non-Iranian oil is sufficient to allow for countries to cut their oil purchases from Iran. The new sanctions, passed as part of the defense budget and mandated by the Senate in a rare 100-0 vote, penalize foreign corporations or other entities that purchase oil from Iran’s central bank, which collects payment for most of the country’s energy exports. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program.
New Zealand’s environmental watchdog has announced an investigation into the consequences of the controversial mining method known as fracking.
Parliamentary commissioner for the environment Dr Jan Wright says there is a strong case for an official investigation into hydraulic fracturing, where high-pressure injections of water, sand and chemicals are used to fracture underground rock to release oil and gas.
The Green Party says New Zealanders should be worried about the consequences of fracking, which overseas studies have linked to water contamination, health problems and earthquakes.
The New South Wales Government has extended its fracking ban until April until a review on potential risks is complete.
Western Australia, however, allows shale gas fracking.
The New Zealand inquiry will report to parliament by the end of the year.
The science behind the sanctions Scienceline I take the threat very seriously” US Navy Vice Admiral Mark Fox said at a recent news conference in Bahrain. He is talking about the tension between US and Iranian naval forces in the straits of Hormuz, through which a third of sea-shipped oil sails. See all stories on this topic »
The complexities of energy delivery ABC Online Well Daniel Yergin joins us now in our Washington studio. TONY JONES: Can we start with the immediate energy future? Are we headed for a new global oil shock as tensions rise over Iran’s nuclear program? DANIEL YERGIN: Certainly, the main reason we’re … See all stories on this topic »
