Ben Bernake, Federal Reserve Chairman, stated that the U.S. economy is facing “significant” risks to growth, while the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries lowered its forecast for world oil-demand growth for 2008 and 2009. in apart chances John Kilduff, an analyst at futures brokerage MF Global, said “Signs of economic contraction and financial-market malaise are [...]

Xstrata has jumped back into the global merger frenzy. It emerged yesterday that the miner is the mystery bidder that forced Macarthur Coal, Australia’s largest independent coal producer, to announce 10 days ago that it had been approached about a possible takeover.
Macarthur and its top two shareholders, who it admitted had also been approached, have [...]

Malaysian Estate Owners’ Association president Boon Weng Siew said the price control mechanism under the Cooking Oil Subsidy Scheme (COSS) was causing the industry to suffer.
Responding to Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad’s suggestion to review price control and subsidies, Boon said artificial price controls led to shortages in the market.
Cooking [...]

Ridgeway Petroleum Corp. is pleased to announce its audited financial results for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2006.
The Company incurred a net loss of $2,806,069 for the year ended December 31, 2006 compared to a net loss of $2,493,939 during the same period in 2005. The increase in the loss in the current period [...]

KAL Energy, Inc is pleased to announce that over 3000m of drilling has been completed of its previously announced $2 million Phase 1 Exploration program on its Thermal Coal Project in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. This program includes extensive drilling, trenching, sampling and mapping of known geological structures, and exploration for unknown structures.
Over the past [...]

Workers at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia rallied to demand higher pay in a protest that may to curb output at the world’s second-largest copper mine. The price of the metal gained.
Protesters are moving to Timika, the regency’s capital, said Frans Pigome, the head of Tongoi Papua, which represents native Papuans. [...]

Environmentalists had hoped that if a new coal-fired power plant like the one proposed near Waterloo had to be built in Iowa it would at least be required to get some of its energy from renewable sources.
But an Iowa House committee has scrapped the idea after concerns about the cost to the industry.
A measure killed [...]

Opponents of the Opp Mine painted a picture of environmental pollution, property destruction and community demise for Jackson County commissioners on Wednesday.
More than 75 people attended the three-hour public hearing. Dozens testified against a requested zoning change that would allow the property owners to initiate a large strip-mining operation near a residential neighborhood about a [...]

FRANKFORT - A top labor leader accused a House committee chairman yesterday of delaying action on a coal-mine safety bill because of his ties to the industry.
State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan told reporters after a rally in the Capitol Rotunda for a coal-mine safety bill that House Natural Resources and Environment Committee Chairman Jim Gooch [...]

More than four years after the United States accused North Korea of a covert uranium enrichment program — triggering collapse of a nuclear deal with Pyongyang — the program has receded as an issue and some experts say Washington may have overstated or misread the intelligence.
U.S. officials no longer make a major public issue of [...]