The Falkland Islands, a British windswept archipelago in the southern Atlantic off the coast of Argentina, last had its moment in the media spotlight two decades ago, when the two nations fought a brief but vicious conflict after Buenos Aires invaded the islands, providing a PR boost to Argentina’s ruling junta. But, Argentina lost, and the 11-week conflict claimed more than 900 lives, leaving Britain in control of the islands. UK analytical firm Edison Investment Research is now reporting that the Falklands’ oil industry…

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this, the Neocons assured us. Iran would soon be on its knees because of ever more stringent US sanctions on Iran. But Iran just cheekily sent two warships through the Suez Canal to dock at the Syrian port of Tartous. The old Mubarak government in Egypt might not have allowed such a thing, but the Arab Spring has brought to power an Egyptian government eager to demonstrate its independence from Washington. Brent crude just hit $121 dollars a barrel, the highest in 8 months and a remarkable figure in the absence…

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Concerns over the safety of tar sands oil from Canada is at the forefront of the political debate in the United States. President Obama’s critics accuse him of being a “job killer” for stating initial opposition to the planned $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline while his allies on the opposite side of the aisle don’t believe much of what the Republicans say about the pipeline anyway. But across the border, it seems the imbroglio is much worse. There, it seems, pipeline company Enbridge is throwing money at aboriginal groups along the country’s western…

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Among African nations, foreign observers can only cheer on Rwanda’s progress as it recovers from Africa’s most brutal civil conflict after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DROC). A vicious civil war erupted in 1990, led by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic front (RPF), which led in turn to a murderous genocidal 1994 conflict, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to one million Tutsi and moderate Hutus before the RPF ended the killings with a military victory. Now, time to recover, and one of the population’s pressing…

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Remember last year when Germany decided to speed up its phasing out of nuclear power and switch to clean energy and everyone (not in the clean energy industry) got freaked out about how German electricity prices would rise and the country would just start importing electricity from France’s nuclear power plants? Well, as I just wrote, it seems pretty clear that solar photovoltaics are bringing down the cost of electricity in Germany. Additionally, German electricity exports to France have been increasing!“Because France has so much…

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In New York, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that jatropha-based fuels were the near-term candidate as sustainable aviation fuels available at prices competitive with conventional jet fuel. The BNEF research unit said that it expected jatropha-based jet fuel to be available at $0.86-a-litre ($3.25 per gallon) by 2018. The Bloomberg report Following the emergence of jatropha-based fuels, BNEF said that aviation fuel made from pyrolysis of woody biomass represented the next most affordable category of aviation biofuels, projecting that jet…

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