The world’s fourth largest oil exporter, Iran, is seeking payment for oil sales in euros as it shifts currency reserves out of dollars. The State-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), acting under instructions from the Central Bank of Iran, has inserted a new clause in oil supply contracts that allows it to request payment in [...]

Bears in the mountains of northern Spain have stopped hibernating, scientists have revealed in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.
Bears are supposed to slumber throughout the winter, slowing their body rhythms to a minimum and drawing on stored resources, because frozen weather [...]

Oil giant Shell has begun evacuating the dependents of hundreds of expatriate staff from the Niger Delta after local militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound that damaged cars, although no one was injured.
The pullout involves some 400 foreign family members from Port Harcourt, Warri and Bonny Island. Staff will [...]

PetroChina, the country’s largest oil company, has signed a 25-year agreement to buy three million tons of liquefied natural gas a year from Iran to supply terminals it plans to build on China’s northern coast. Gas deliveries will start in 2011. The company is expanding gas production and sales as demand for cleaner-burning fuels increases [...]

In Brussels today the EU’s environment commissioner will propose including airlines in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which aims to tackle climate change.
However, the aviation industry could make up to £2.7 billion profits through the ETS Scheme, according to report by one of Britain’s leading think tanks, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).