This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Monde. Standing in front of a stopped truck in the desert, two workers in red overalls are pumping water out of an oil slick before installing a new derrick. The landscape is moonlike. Off on the horizon is the city of Karamay, a ...

Regular, petroleum-based plastic doesn't biodegrade. But this year's crop of Earth Day — inspired ads shows plant-based plastics doing just that: an empty SunChips bag fading into the soil, a Paper Mate pen dissolving underground. Although the visuals suggest that these items simply disintegrate , the reality is more complicated. Take the SunChips bag. It needs to go in a compost bin; the packaging is clear about that. Likewise, Paper Mate notes that the pen's outer casing will break down ...

Dubai's financial crisis may have calmed a bit now that the central bank of the United Arab Emirates has promised to stand behind the city state's banks with fresh liquidity. After all, the UAE, to which Dubai belongs, has perhaps $700 billion accumulated from petroleum riches — a resource that Dubai, which is apparently stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt, does not enjoy. But the question remains, if the central bank in Abu Dhabi decides ...

A mushroom cloud of thick dark smoke hovered over the Puerto Rican capital after a blast ripped through a fuel storage complex near San Juan early Friday and caused a massive fire. At least one injury occurred and at least 350 people have been evacuated as around 100 firefighters worked through the night to fight the blaze, Gov. Luis Fortuno said. Firefighters said it would take a few days to control the inferno. Eleven tanks are ablaze, and firefighters are ...

Nigeria has set its sights on making multibillion-dollar oil deals with China amid peace moves with militants. Lawmakers in the west African country -- one of the world's top producers of oil -- are crafting new money-making changes for its state oil corporation, as officials negotiate multibillion-dollar oil deals with China. At the same time, the government is brokering peace with bandits whose attacks have cost the oil industry millions. Nigeria's minister for state of petroleum, Odein Ajumogobia, talked this ...

An oil deal and trade concerns with Libya were at one point considered as factors in the Lockerbie bomber's release, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said in an interview published Saturday. Ultimately, convicted bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer, a decision that Scottish, British and Libyan officials have said was not linked to oil or trade. In an interview published Saturday in The Daily Telegraph, Straw said trade and the ...

Iraqi authorities have sent additional national police brigades to the border with Syria amid heightened tensions between the two nations, Ministry of Information officials said Saturday. Ultimately, convicted bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer, a decision that Scottish, British and Libyan officials have said was not linked to oil or trade. In an interview published Saturday in The Daily Telegraph, Straw said trade and the interests of oil giant ...

Iraq awarded a lucrative oil contract to BP and China National Petroleum Corp., government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Wednesday, while rejecting other companies' offers for other oil fields. The joint BP-CNPC bid was for the al-Rumeila oil field, one of the largest in the world. The energy companies are expected to increase production at the oil field by 50 percent, to 285,000 barrels a day, for a service charge of $2 for each additional barrel produced, al-Dabbagh said in a ...