A coal-to-oil plant proposed in Schuylkill County is expected to create 150 jobs and 1,000 construction positions. But some residents are worried about environmental problems from waste the plant will produce.
“I know there’s going to be enormous amounts of slag and I don’t know how they’re going to get rid of it,” Mahanoy Township supervisors [...]

When congressional staffers take a tour of Arches National Park, their agenda always includes a nondescript piece of desert over by Balanced Rock.
“They all want to see where Ed Abbey lived,” said park Superintendent Laura Joss, standing beside her government-issue Chevy Malibu.
Pointing out Abbey’s old trailer site framed pastorally beneath the La Sal Mountains and [...]

Gary Davison, a director with Lightning Nickel and managing director of mining and geotechnical consultant Mining One, has agreed to join the BMJV, which consists of Beaconsfield Gold chief executive Bill Colvin and Allstate administrator Michael Ryan.
It is not clear whether Mr Ryan will remain on the committee as an Allstate representative.
Mr Ryan has been [...]

Chinese firms have bought a controlling stake in one of North Korea’s largest copper mines, Chinese and South Korean media have reported.
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Luanhe Industrial Group, based in north China’s Hebei province, last month signed a deal in Pyongyang giving it a 51-percent share in Hyesan Youth Cooper Mine, the state-controlled Tangshan Labor Daily said in a [...]

The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to take immediate possession of the Kudremukh iron ore mines in Karnataka, following the stoppage of operations there in the wake of an adverse effect on the environment and eco system.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justices Arijit Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia asked it to select [...]

The smallest form of life known to science just got smaller.
Four million of a newly discovered microbe — assuming the discovery, reported in the journal Science, is confirmed — could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.
Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment — drainage water, as caustic as [...]

Harlan County native Carl Shoupe hasn’t met the families who lost loved ones in West Virginia’s Sago Mine disaster. But he shares a brotherhood with them as a former coal miner, and he recently helped re-enact the tragedy in a Discovery Channel feature.
The Discovery Channel filmed part of the two-hour documentary Sago Mine Disaster: On [...]

Government agencies are urging consumers to fuel their cars with ethanol, which eventually could have a negative impact on the agriculture industry.
Michigan uses one-third of its corn crop each year to create ethonol.
The agriculture industry is breaking even on corn prices for the first time in years.

The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says the state will produce a record 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006.
The trade group says Iowa ethanol plants will turn out 36% more corn-based fuel in 2006 than last year, when 1.1 billion gallons was made.
In producing the record amount of ethanol, Iowa’s ethanol plants processed over 550 [...]

SunOpta Inc. announced that it has signed a 50-50 joint venture agreement with GreenField Ethanol Inc., formerly known as Commercial Alcohols Inc., Canada’s leading producer of fuel ethanol.
Both companies will develop and implement commercial scale processes for the production of cellulosic ethanol from wood chips, including the planned establishment of one or more [...]