19/11/2009

Weekly News Round Up


A little earlier than usual - this week's round-up of news and updates on previous stories

  • IPIC has responded to reports that it was in talks with Bayer MaterialScience and four other global petrochemical groups.
    An IPIC spokesman commented: "At present there are no firm plans to do anything with Bayer MaterialScience, or any other chemical company. A number of initiatives are under consideration internally, but nothing has been decided."
  • Three officials at a subsidiary of the UK mining company Vedanta Resources have been arrested in India following the collapse of a chimney in one of its power stations which killed 41 people.
    The tragic incident occurred in September at Vedanta's Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco) power plant in Chhattisgarh, central India, during heavy storms. After a two-month investigation, local police have arrested Balco's vice-president, who was also the plant's project manager, its associate general manager and a graduate trainee engineer
  • The chief executive of the UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA) has warned  that the UK runs the risk of losing out to its international competitors if the government does not tackle fundamental issues such as regulation, energy and credit availability. In a CIA survey of business investment attitudes, 68% of British chemical and pharmaceutical business leaders said they had felt overburdensome regulation in the UK would act as a barrier to further investment. The survey also showed that 53% of those questioned said energy security and price would act as a key barrier, while 37% cited the problem of credit availability.

  • The UK Times Newspaper published the results of a poll on the views of the UK public on climate change. According to the Times, only 41% accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. 32% believe that the link is not yet proved; 8% say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15% say that the world is not warming.
  • The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has confirmed that that spilled gasoline vaporised and caused a fire and blast in late October that destroyed more than 10 petroleum storage tanks owned by Caribbean Petroleum in Puerto Rico.

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