One of the largest natural gas reservoirs in South America is showing signs of decline and the hopeful expectations that emerged in 2006, to turn Bolivia into a regional energy leader, are waning.
A dark mole dots the brown earth, among the green scrub at this spot in southeastern Mexico. A repetitive “glug, glug,” a noise sounding like a thirsty animal, and an intense stench lead to this site, hidden in the undergrowth, where a broken pipe has created a pool of dense oil.
Liquefied gas does not occupy a prominent position in Mexico's energy mix, but the government wants to change that scenario, to take advantage of the crisis unleashed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the need for new sources of the fuel due to the sanctions against Russia.
At home, Isabel Bracamontes uses gas only for cooking. "We try to prepare food that doesn't need cooking, like salads," she says in the southeastern Mexican city of Mérida.
In his community of small farmers and ranchers in northern Mexico, Aristeo Benavides has witnessed the damage caused by the natural gas industry, which has penetrated collectively owned landholdings, altering local communities' way of life and forms of production.
As foreign donors drag their feet on injecting badly needed cash into the government’s coffers, local analysts are increasingly worried that this will affect implementation of key development projects that require donor funding.
Unconventional oil and gas reserves in Vaca Muerta in southwest Argentina hold out the promise of energy self-sufficiency and development for the country. But the fracking technique used to extract this treasure from underground rocks could be used at a huge cost.
Mostly unreported as the Ukraine conflict captures headlines, international financing has played a significant role in the current conflict in Ukraine.
In April 2004, Argentina began to steadily cut natural gas exports to neighbouring Chile, triggering a major energy crisis and revealing structural problems in this vital sector.
The deepening Ukrainian crisis is placing Turkey in a difficult diplomatic position. At stake for officials in Ankara are Turkey's commitments to its Western allies and its cultural kin, Crimean Tatars, against its economic and political relationship with Moscow.
It’s springtime in Ukraine, but conflict and economic threats are bringing an early chill. During these months when the country normally stores up energy reserves for winter, access to natural gas may be Russia’s best weapon to influence Ukraine’s new government.
Throughout the Ukraine crisis, European Union (EU) leaders have become more vocal about their interest in reducing Europe’s consumption of Russian natural gas. As a result, Qatar — the world’s number-one provider of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — is well positioned to play a more influential role in Europe’s energy landscape.
The enthusiasm of the government and oil and gas companies over Argentina’s unconventional fuel potential has come up against fierce opposition from communities living near the country’s shale gas reserves and environmental organisations.
Environmentalists and others here are reacting with concern to a surprise announcement on Monday of a major deal that would see U.S. natural gas exported to the United Kingdom, marking the first time that such sales have been permitted.
The 19,000 inhabitants of the municipality of Caraparí, the area supplying a third of Bolivia’s gas exports, do not have access to gas or petrol, six years after the nationalisation of the mega deposit and almost a quarter century after its discovery.
An international coalition led by the World Bank is calling for state-backed and private oil producers to reduce “gas flaring” by an additional 30 percent over the next five years, saying that doing so would be equivalent to taking 60 million cars off of the roads.
If a series of "golden rules" can be followed, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests, global natural gas usage could grow by more than 50 percent by 2035.