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Australia authorizes special forces troops to go to Iraq

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian special forces troops will be deployed in Iraq to assist in the fight against Islamic State militants, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Friday, and its aircraft will also join U.S.-led coalition strikes. Abbott said in a nationally televised news conference the Australian troops would be engaged in an "advise and assist" capacity to support the Iraqi army in their battle against the militant Islamist group. The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in Syria for almost two weeks with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets in neighboring Iraq since August. European countries have joined the campaign in Iraq but not in Syria. Last month, Abbott sent aircraft and 600 personnel to the United Arab Emirates in preparation for joining the coalition. He has since said it was likely Australian aircraft would join the strikes to combat Islamic State, […]

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AWE, Origin in Huge Western Australia Gas Find

AWE and Origin’s Waitsia gas discovery is about 217 miles north of Perth, Western Australia. This picture shows the Pearce Air Base in Bullsbrook, some 21 miles north of Perth. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images PERTH, Australia—Australian energy company AWE Ltd. said Thursday it may have made the largest onshore natural-gas discovery in Western Australia for 50 years, in partnership with Origin Energy Ltd. The Waitsia field could contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas, AWE said, following an initial analysis of the recently drilled Senecio-3 well. The assessment helped to send shares in Melbourne-based AWE up 14%. Australia has long been a hot spot for oil and gas exploration, and international companies including Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are investing billions to build export facilities following success with the drillbit in previous years. However, industry groups say interest has been flagging recently, especially offshore where […]

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Apache Makes Big Oil Find Off Western Australia

PERTH, Australia—In what would be one of Australia’s largest oil discoveries in decades, U.S. energy company Apache Corp. said an exploration well offshore Western Australia state had found as much as 300 million barrels of crude. The drilling result from the Phoenix South-1 well in the offshore Canning Basin could reopen a frontier for oil exploration that some international energy companies abandoned decades earlier after wells turned up dry. "The oil and reservoir quality we have seen point to a commercial discovery," said Thomas E. Voytovich, a senior executive at Apache’s international arm. "If these results are borne out by further appraisal drilling, Phoenix South may represent a new oil province for Australia." Australia is in need of new sources of oil to replace fast diminishing reserves from existing fields. According to BP PLC, Australia’s oil production last year fell by 17% to 416,000 barrels a day—its lowest level […]

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Australian Repeal Deals Blow to Global Carbon-Emission Plans

GDF Suez Australian Energy’s Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Morwell, Australia. Bloomberg News Australia’s repeal of a pioneering tax on carbon emissions has dealt a sharp blow to struggling international efforts to coordinate on global warming and comes ahead of key climate-change talks next year. On July 17, Australia’s parliament pulled the plug on the 2012 tax, which charged 348 businesses such as steelmakers and power companies A$25.40 (US$24) per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. The levy was slated to evolve next year into an emissions-trading system that would link to the European Union’s. Although environmentalists world-wide applauded the program, Australian consumers and corporations bitterly protested the added costs, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying it sucked A$9 billion off economic growth each year. Scrapping the program further isolates the EU and other countries that have plowed ahead with strict measures to limit carbon emissions and that have been […]

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Environmentalists Denounce Repeal of Australia’s Carbon Tax

SYDNEY, Australia — Opposition politicians and environmentalists in Australia reacted with dismay Thursday to the country’s repeal of laws requiring large companies to pay for carbon emissions , saying that it made Australia the first country to reverse progress on fighting climate change. The Senate voted 39 to 32 on Thursday to repeal the so-called carbon tax after Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conservative government secured the support of a number of independent senators. The House of Representatives had voted earlier in the week to repeal the unpopular measure, which has been a highly contentious issue in Australian politics for seven years. The tax was devised to penalize hundreds of Australia’s biggest producers of carbon emissions, setting a price of 23 Australian dollars, or $21.50, per metric ton of carbon dioxide when it was put into effect in 2012 under then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Labor Party, which is […]

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Australia Repeals Carbon Tax

CANBERRA, Australia—Australia repealed laws forcing companies to pay for carbon emissions, making it the world’s first developed nation to undo legislation aimed at dealing with perceived man-made climate change. Australia’s Senate on Thursday voted to repeal the so-called carbon tax that conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott pledged to get rid of ahead of elections last year. The move follows almost a decade of heated political debate and wrangling between senators over the issue.

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Australia Axing Pollution Levy Marks First U-Turn on Climate

Australia ’s decision to repeal its levy limiting fossil-fuel pollution makes it the first nation to turn back from a market approach to fighting global warming. Prime Minister Tony Abbott ’s government won final approval from Parliament yesterday to scrap a levy about 300 companies paid for their carbon dioxide emissions. The move leaves Australia, the largest polluter per capita among industrial nations, without a system for reducing greenhouse gases as it prepares to host a meeting of the Group of 20 nations. “Australia is bereft of a credible climate policy just as the international community focuses on deeper reduction targets,” said John Connor, chief executive officer of The Climate Institute, a Sydney-based environmental group. He called the move an “historic act of irresponsibility and recklessness.” The about-face sets up Abbott for a clash with Europe and the U.S., which asked for climate policy to be on the G-20 […]

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LNG project in Australia scrubbed

Australian energy company Santos said Thursday it was mulling its options after finding the Bonaparte LNG project doesn’t meet its commercial interests. Santos said it would consider other development options for the Petrel, Tern and Frigate natural gas fields, including the possibility of building a pipeline from the fields in the Timor Sea. Santos has a 40 percent interest in the developments alongside French company GDF Suez . "While the partners firmly believe the fields have material value, having been fully appraised, their future development using floating [liquefied natural gas] technology … does not currently meet the companies’ commercial requirements," the company said in a joint statement with its French partner. Dubbed the Bonaparte LNG project, the partners said they’re no longer moving ahead with front-end engineering and design. Australia is a leading exporter of LNG and energy companies operating there have secured long-term supply contracts with Asian countries […]

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Antarctica 'stealing' Australia's rain: study

Antarctica is "stealing" Australia ‘s rainfall, explaining why the former is not warming as much as other continents and why southern Australia is recording more droughts, the Australian National University (ANU) reported on Monday. Researchers in Australia have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds. These would normally deliver rain to southern Australia but are instead pushing further south towards Antarctica. "With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall," said Dr Nerilie Abram, lead researcher from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences. "As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica," she said. "As greenhouse gases continue to rise we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia." Until this study, published in Nature Climate Change, Antarctic climate observations were available only from the […]

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Antarctica ‘stealing’ Australia’s rain: study

Antarctica is "stealing" Australia ‘s rainfall, explaining why the former is not warming as much as other continents and why southern Australia is recording more droughts, the Australian National University (ANU) reported on Monday. Researchers in Australia have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds. These would normally deliver rain to southern Australia but are instead pushing further south towards Antarctica. "With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall," said Dr Nerilie Abram, lead researcher from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences. "As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica," she said. "As greenhouse gases continue to rise we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia." Until this study, published in Nature Climate Change, Antarctic climate observations were available only from the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple